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ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 


ITALY'S  WAR 
FOR  A  DESERT 

BEING  SOME  EXPERIENCES  OF 
A  WAR-GORRESPONDENT  WITH 
THE  ITALIANS  IN  TRIPOLI 
BY    FRANCIS    McCULLAGH 

Author  of  "With  the  Cossacks,"  "The  Fall  of  Abd-ul-Hamld,"  etc. 


CHICAGO 

F.    G.    BROWNE    &    GO. 

LONDON:    HERBERT    &    DANIEL 

1913 


DEDICATED    TO    MY 

COLLEAGUES    AND    FELLOW-CORRESPONDENTS 

BRITISH,    GERMAN,    AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN 

RUSSIAN,    AND    FRENCH 

WHO    WERE    NOT    AFRAID    TO    TELL 

THE    TRUTH    ABOUT    TRIPOLI 


-A. 

€0 
QZ 


NOTE  BY  THE  PUBLISHERS 

Some  photographs  of  the  Oasis  Repression  taken  by  Mr. 
McCullagh,  and  submitted  to  us,  have  been  found  unsuitable 
for  publication  in  a  work  intended  for  general  circulation, 
and  have  not,  therefore,  been  reproduced  in  the  present 
volume. 

The  Publishers  are  not  necessarily  committed  to  the  views 
on  the  war  expressed  by  the  Author. 


CONTENTS 

PART   I 
THE  GENESIS  OF  THE  WAR 

CHAPTER    I 

IL   NAZIONALISMO 

Italy's  sentimental  claim  on  Tripoli — The  Italian  Nationalists 
— Like  the  Greek  jingoes — Gabriele  d'  Annunzio — Adowa — 
Italia  Irredenta — What  Austria-Hungary  may  do — Italians 
held  in  low  esteem  in  Northern  Africa  .  .  .  Page         3 

CHAPTER    II 

THE    BANCO    DI   ROMA 

Resembled  the  Russo-Chinese  Bank — The  Trail  of  the  con- 
cessionaire— The  Cecil  Rhodes  of  Tripolitania — Bank 
enjoyed  assistance  of  Italian  Government — "  Peaceful 
penetration  " — War  or  bankruptcy — German  competition  .       14 

CHAPTER    III 

ITALY,    GERMANY,    ENGLAND,    AND    TURKEY 

The  Tripoli  raid  a  consequence  of  Agadir — Previous  Italian 
suspicions  of  France — Italians  afraid  of  England  and  Ger- 
many— Sir  Edward  Grey's  complicity  in  the  Tripoli  raid — 
Remarkable  article  in  "  Fortnightly  Review " — Why 
Lord  Kitchener  was  sent  to  Egypt — British  Government 
and  section  of  British  Press  friendly  to  Italy — Sir  Edward 
Grey  and  Italy's  Declaration  of  War — British  Foreign 
Ofifice  and  Caneva's  treatment  of  the  Arab  "  traitors  " — 
"The  Times"  and  the  Italian  defeat  at  Bir  Tobrsis — 
Why  Mahmud  Shefket  Pasha  left  Tripoli  undefended — 
Italy's  fear  that  Turkey  would  build  up  a  navy — Turkey's 
proposal  to  form  territorial  army  in  Tripolitania         .         .       22 

CHAPTER    IV 

IS   TRIPOLI    WORTH   THE   TROUBLE  ? 

Utter  uselessness  of  Tripolitania  from  agricultural  and  com- 
mercial points  of  view — Evidence  of  M.  de  Mathuisieulx,  of 
Colonel  Monteil,  of  M.  Grossi — Jewish  Territorial  Organisa- 


viii        ITALY'S    WAR    FOR    A    DESERT 

tion  will  not  have  Tripoli  even  as  a  gift — Dr.  Viacher — 
Frenchman  who  sank  well  240  feet  without  finding  water — 
Railways  and  schools  for  Tripoli  :  nothing  for  Sicily — 
Socialists  make  capital  out  of  this — Italian  poverty — 
Delusion  of  Italian  emigration  to  Tripoli — Same  delusions 
entertained  when  Italians  took  Eritrea  and  Benadir — 
Importance  of  Tripolitania  to  Turkey — Sole  point  of  contact 
with  African  Mohammedans  ....  Page       37 


PART  II 
THE  BOMBARDMENT  AND  OCCUPATION 

CHAPTER    I 

THE    BOMBABDMENT 

Forts  cannot  respond — Delirious  enthusiasm  of  Italians — 
Only  four  artillerists  in  each  battery — The  soldierly  letters'of 
Enver  Bey     .........       47 

CHAPTER    II 

IN    TRIPOLI   TOWN 

The  Hotel  Minerva  at  Tripoli — Excitement  of  Consuls — 
Italians  make  no  provision  to  save  Christian  population — 
Consuls  rely  on  Turks — Turkey  gains  from  moral  point  of 
view — The  Ottomans  are  at  length  civilised        ...        57 

CHAPTER    III 

THE    RETURN    OF   THE    ROMANS 

Roman  remains  strewn  all  over  Tripolitania — Corinthian 
columns  for  camels  to  scratch  themselves  against — Arch  of 
Triumph  as  a  cinematograph  show  .....       65 

CHAPTER  IV 

THE    LANDING   OF   THE    BEBSAGLIEBI 

The  landing  of  the  troops — Harbour  crowded  with  shipping — 
Sunken  Turkish  vessels — Illumination  at  night — Ignorance 
of  sanitary  precautions — Over-ripe  melons  and  bad  beer — 
Unsuitable  dress  for  soldiers — "  The  sword  of  the  Prophet 
and  of  Islam"       .......         .69 

CHAPTER    V 

THE    CONQUERED    TURK 

Old  Turks  left  behind — Scurvily  treated  by  victors — Mixture 
of  races  in  street — The  hardy  and  desperate  Touaregs — 
"  The  eye  of  a  wild  beast  watching  its  prey  "    ,         .  .       74 


CONTENTS  ix 

CHAPTER    VI 

THE   SIEGE   OF   THE    DESERT 

Closeness  of  Italian  line  to  town — Italians  "  massed  together 
like  policemen  at  the  end  of  a  street  " — The  Desert — The 
outpost — Soldiers  do  not  care  for  war — First  spy — A 
night  attack — Cholera !  .         •         .         .         .         .  Page       82 

CHAPTER    VII 

'  HOW   THE   TURKS   LEFT   TRIPOLI 

Italians  scoff  at  Turks — But  Turks  retreated  to  save  towns- 
people from  bombardment — Midnight  conference — Two 
Consuls  beg  Turks  to  leave  quietly — Ottoman  leaders  deter- 
mined to  die  beneath  ruins  of  Tripoli — Consuls  finally 
persuade  them  to  retire  without  fighting — What  would 
have  happened  to  Italians  in  case  Turks  had  remained         .        90 

CHAPTER    VIII 

BEFORE    THE    ARMY    CAME 

Jealousy  between  Army  and  Fleet — Fleet  consequently  seizes 
Tripoli  before  Expeditionary  Army  arrives — Folly  of  this 
step — Bluejackets  infallibly  cut  to  pieces  had  Nesciat  Bey 
returned — No  guards  at  Sharashett — Turkish  soldiers  enter 
oasis  nightly — An  adventure  in  the  oasis — Civilian  popula- 
tion convinced  that  Italians  "  were  acting  like  madmen  " — 
Turkish  mistakes — Why  the  Turks  always  attacked  at 
BumeUana — How  Nesciat  Bey  might  have  made  Tripoli 
city  quake — Arab  contempt  for  aeroplanes  and  battleships 
— A  night  attack  at  the  front — Superannuated  donkey 
bombarded — A  banshee  ? — Unsoldierly  treatment  of  Tvurks- 
by  Italians — Flags  of  truce  not  respected — Turkish  soldiers 
butchered — Sick  Turks  taken  from  hospital  and  paraded  in 
Italy  as  prisoners  of  war — Italian  prisoners  well  treated  by 
Turks '99 


PART   III 

THE  BATTLES 

CHAPTER    I 

THE  BATTLE  OF  SHARASHETT  :    HOW  THE  ARABS  BROKE 
THE  ITALIAN    LINE 

Position  of  Caneva's  forces — Geographical  features — The 
aeroplanes — Why  aeroplanes  made  bad  start  in  Tripoli — 
Arab  feint  at  Sultanie  and  Bumeliana — Real  attack  at 
Sharashett — Two  companies  of  the  Borsaglieri  cut  to  pieces 
— Why  victorious  Arabs  did  not  march  on  Tripoli       .  .      119 

a  2 


X  ITALY'S    WAR    FOR    A    DESERT 

CHAPTER   II 

THE    MAN-HUNT    IN    THE    OASIS 

Italian  losses  at  Sharashett — Amateurishness  of  Italian  Army 
— Caneva's  apathy — Casual  way  in  which  Colonel  Fara 
relieved  —  Arabs  block  relieving  force  —  Arabs  spread 
throughout  oasis — Three  Arabs  shot — Italians  fire  on  inno- 
cent Arabs — The  cry  of  "treachery" — Unnecessary  cruelty 
on  part  of  Italians — Prisoner  bites  Italian  flag — Fourteen 
Arab  soldiers  unjustly  hanged — What  an  Italian  jingo 
thinks  of  these  executions — The  triimiphal  music  of  the 
conquerors  .......  Page     135 

CHAPTER    III 

THE    GREAT   PANIC 

In "  the  dining  -  room  of  the  Hotel  Minerva  —  Erroneous 
report  of  town  rising  causes  wildest  excitement — Christian 
damsels  barricade  themselves  in  their  bedrooms — Refugees 
pour  into  Consulates — Cavass  of  French  Consulate  fired  upon 
by  Italians  —  French  friendliness  towards  Italy  and  the 
reasons  for  it  —  Italy's  blundering  seizure  of  French 
steamers — Italian  officer  on  point  of  sweeping  market- 
place with  bullets  —  Caneva's  neglect  to  police  town — 
Employs  renegade  Turkish  gendarmes — Caneva's  explana- 
tion of  the  town  panic     .  .  .  .  .  .  .152 

CHAPTER    IV 

SOME  LESSONS  OF  THE  GREAT  PANIC 

Turks  behaved  much  better  than  Italians — Ottomans  had  kept 
admirable  order  in  Tripoli — Many  lives  lost  under  Italian 
regime — Invaders  anxious  that  some  Italians  should  be 
massacred — How  Turks  treated  Italian  sick — How  Italians 
treated  Arab  sick — Italian  conviction  that  one  scale  of 
treatment  for  Italians  and  another  scale  for  Turks — 
Journalist  who  would  only  leave  "  between  two  janis- 
saries " — Turk  has  faculty  of  command — Italian  has  not — 
How  a  Turkish  officer  squelched  a  panic — The  ItaUan  Army 
"  a  casual  collection  of  people  in  uniform  " — Soldiers  afraid 
to  look  over  trenches — Comparison  between  Italians  and 
modern  Greeks — How  the  "  pets  "  of  Europe  broke  loose — 
Soldiers  too  young  and  officers  too  old — Army  excitable  and 
"panicky" — The  mysterious  blood-lust   .  .  .  .      164 

CHAPTER    V 

THE  EXECUTION  OF  THE  GERMAN  CAVASS 

German  Cavass  accused  of  mvu-dering  ItaHan  soldier — Given 
an  imposing  trial — Reason  why  this  was  done — The  coolness 
of  the  Cavass — Italians  amazed  at  his  bravery — Cameras, 
cigarettes,  and  cinematographs — Light-hearted  joking  at  the 
execution — Soldiers  miss  at  twenty  paces — The  Cavass's  dog     176 


CONTENTS  xi 

CHAPTER    VI 

THE    OASIS    OF   DEATH 

Tripoli  panic-stricken — Criers  and  death-penalties — Italians 
work  themselves  into  condition  of  insanity.  Nervous 
sentinels  in  oasis — Around  the  camp-fires — Tales  of  Adowa 
— How  lurid  legends  of  Abyssinian  mutilations  hung  over 
Tripoli  expedition  like  ghost  and  contributed  to  oasis 
massacres — Panic  of  Italian  Press  and  people — Fables 
regarding  Arab  cruelty — Natives  even  accused  of  cannibal- 
ism— Terrible  legends  of  the  Saracens — Stories  about  imder- 
ground  passages — Italians  naturally  suspicious — The  Italian 
private's  point  of  view — How  soldiers  gradually  became 
almost  insane  with  terror  and  rage — Officers  helpless — 
A  Hebrew  Vicar  of  Bray  .....   Page     188 

CHAPTER    VII 

THE   ROAD   TO   THE   FRONT 

Caneva  attempted  to  disarm  people  at  wrong  time — The 
lack  of  officers — Turkish  officer  gives  Caneva  two  hours 
to  surrender — Caneva's  preparations — Battle  begins  before 
dawn — I  go  out  to  the  east  front — The  horrors  of  the  aban- 
doned oasis — Danger  from  both  Arabs  and  Italians — At 
the  extreme  front.  A  Secret  Service  man,  and  where  I 
met  him  next         ........     201 


CHAPTER    VIII 

THE   BATTLE    OF   SIDI  MESSRI :     ARABS   AGAIN   BREAK 
ITALIAN   LINE 

At  "the  house  of  Gemal  Bey" — An  attack  before  dawn — 
Arabs  again  in  the  rear — How  they  got  there — Arab  craze 
for  loot — The  Arab  who  "  pinched  "  the  boots — Stripping 
the  slain — Arabs  accumulating  Italian  loot — Old  gardener 
runs  amok — Desperate  fighting  in  oasis — Houses  blown  up 
with  dynamite — Arab  untruthfulness — Italian  artillery 
saves  invaders — Extreme  bravery  of  the  natives — The 
^odds  against  the  Arabs — How  Italians  behave  when  they 
,are  the  attacking  party — A  point  of  interest  to  Englishmen 
— Difficvdty  over-sea  invaders  have  in  landing  heavy  artillery 
, — How  that  would  tell  against  a  foreign  invader  landing 
in  Great  Britain     .         .  .  .  .  .  .  .211 


CHAPTER    IX 

HOW  THE  GAP  IN  THE  ITALIAN  LINE  WAS  CLOSED 

Gemal  Bey's  house  re-taken — Italians  besieged  there — How 
Italian  reinforcements  arrived  in  time — Arabs,  "  women, 
children,  and  old  people,"  put  at  the  head  of  the  Italian 
column    as    a    shield    against    the    bullets — Italian    Press 


xii  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

regard3  this  as  "  un^  idea  genialiaaima  " — Vitriolic  contempt 
of  German  military  men  for  the  officers  who  thus  shelter 
themselves  behind  women  and  children — How  the  Italians 
"  captured  "  "  the  green  flag  of  the  Prophet  " — Found  it, 
after  the  battle,  underneath  a  heap  of  Arab  dead — The 
"  heirs  of  ancient  Rome  "  run  like  rabbits — Some  of  them 
climb  trees — The  clearing  of  the  oasis  a  succession  of 
Sidney  Street  Sieges — Little  Arab  garrisons  laugh  at  the 
death  of  fire  when  it  comes — A  sniper  caught — An  Italian 
"  advance  " — Tales  of  heroism  and  adventure — The  death 
of  Captain  Verri — Did  he  commit  suicide  ? — Why  the  losses 
among  the  Italian  officers  are  heavy — Prudence  of  the 
Turkish  officers — "  La  plus  grande  et  la  plus  decisive  de 
nos  victoires  " — How  this  "  decisive  "  victory  was  followed 
by  an  Italian  retreat — The  Italians  prevent  Arabs  from 
succouring  their  wounded — This  gives  the  Futurists  and  the 
Impressionists  a  fine  chance — How  the  invaders  fared  when 
it  was  a  case  of  man  to  man     .....   Page     227 


PART    IV 
THE    MASSACRES 

CHAPTER    I 

THE    BURNING   OF   THE   BEDOUIN   VILLAGE 

Italian  mistake  as  to  the  Arabs  who  had  attacked  them  in  the 
rear — Italian  nervousness  on  October  26th — Extremity  of 
terror  reached  when  line  again  broken — Result  of  that 
terror  was  general  massacre  of  innocent  oasis  Arabs — An 
English  officer's  testimony  —  What  "The  Times"  corre- 
spondent said — The  evidence  of  the  "  Daily  Chronicle  " 
correspondent — The  evidence  of  M.  Cossira — The  evidence 
of  Messrs  Ashmead-Bartlett,  Grant,  and  Davis — The 
evidence  of  Mr.  Bennet  Burleigh — What  the  correspondent 
of  the  "  Frankfurter  Zeitung  "  saw — Italian  admissions — 
Invaders  burn  a  Bedouin  village  and  kill  the  inhabitants — 
Women  among  the  slain — Sick  boy  and  sick  women  left  to 
die  on  the  ground — Italians  decline  even  to  give  them  a 
glass  of  water — My  fruitless  attempts  to  obtain  assistance — 
Manly  indignation  of  my  German  colleagues^ — Von  Gottberg 
and  I  hand  back  our  papers — "  What  a  quarrel  between 
England  and  Germany  will  mean  "  — "  There  shall  be 
meetings  in  London,  there  shall  be  speeches  of  protest  in 
Parliament  " — How  the  late  Mr.  W.  T.  Stead  threw  me 
"  into  the  deep  water  " — Treatment  of  an  Arab  girl — Italians 
admit  that  village  was  burned  "  by  way  of  precaution  " — 
Press  controversy  with  Father  Bevilacqua — Mr.  Grant 
defends  me   .........     249 


CONTENTS  xiii 

CHAPTER    II 

THE    "  PURGING  "    OF   THE    OASIS 

Regular  man-hunt  in  the  oasis — A  hunter  and  his  "  bag  " — 
Count  X.  and  his  revolver — How  six  Arabs  were  shot — A  lad 
killed — "  The  Cross  of  the  Merciful  Christ  " — Red  Cross 
doctor  snapshotting  —  Alleged  Arab  atrocities  —  Italian 
defence  amounts  to  this  :  "  We  killed  Arabs  on  Tuesday 
because  Arabs  killed  our  men  on  Friday  of  the  same  week  " 
— Fifty  Arabs  butchered — Horrible  scenes — Other  murders 
— Herr  Artbauer's  testimony — Otto  von  Gottberg's  evidence 
— Italian  murderers  become  mad — Massacres  followed  by 
famine  and  pestilence — How  these  massacres  are  reacting 
on  the  invaders  themselves — Testimony  of  a  "  Times  " 
correspondent — Impossibility  of  Arabs  fabricating  mass- 
acre story — Arab  shipping-clerk  takes  to  the  Desert — 
Italian  tactlessness — Violation  of  harems  and  wholesale 
unveiling  of  women — How  Italian  self-complacency  makes 
the  case  hopeless — "The  tactfulnesa  of  the  proverbial  bull 
in  a  china-shop  "       .         .         .         .  .  .  .  Page     274 

CHAPTER    III 

HASStTNA   KARAMANLI 

How  the  Italians  might  have  avoided  bloodshed — They  could 
have  made  Hassuna  Karamanli  the  Bey  of  Tripoli — Crispi 
and  Karamanli — Italians  will  only  have  crude  aggression — 
From  the  beginning  Karamanli  fears  massacre  of  Arabs — 
Karamanli  disgraced  because  of  oasis  "  rising  " — Agitation 
to  have  his  salary  reduced — "  Thrice  a  traitor  "  .  .      299 

CHAPTER    IV 

OANEVA   OVER-CAKEFUIi 

Caneva  over-cautions  in  keeping  his  line  so  near  Tripoli  and  in 
keeping  all  his  soldiers  at  the  front — Result  was  that  Italian 
Army  lost  spirits  while  Turks  regained  confidence — Deplor- 
able effect  of  Italian  retreat  on  the  Arabs — Caneva  too 
careful  of  his  own  person — Never  became  acquainted  with  his 
own  troops  or  with  biilk  of  his  ofticers — Arabs  regarded  him 
with  contempt — Italians  themselves  not  much  edified — 
Desperate  preparations  to  defend  Caneva's  front  door 
while  His  Excellency  escaped  by  the  back  door — Turks 
nearly  land  a  shell  in  the  big  drum  ....      308 

CHAPTER    V 

CAJTEVA's  MISTAKE  ABOUT  THE   "  SUBMISSION  "   OF 
THE   ARABS 

Caneva  too  careless — He  believes  Galli's  ridiculous  reports 
about  the  friendliness  of  the  Arabs — The  danger  of  employ- 
ing agents  like  Galli — Galli's  troupe  of  bogus  Arab  chiefs — 


xiv        ITALY'S    WAR    FOR    A    DESERT 

The  chauvinism  of  the  Italian  Press — Italian  journalists  are 
litterati  and  impressionists,  "  peculiarly  out  of  touch  with 
realities  " — The  question  of  Italian  cheap  labour  in  Tripoli- 
tania — Italians  regarded  along  African  coast  as  coolies — 
Europeans  rule  Asiatics  through  prestige,  and  prestige  lost 
when  white  Sahib  found  sweeping  streets  alongside  coolie — 
This  miakes  Italy's  position  in  Tripolitania  difficult — Case 
of  England,  France,  and  America — Italians  think  they  will 
get  foreign  capital  for  Tripoli — They  believe  in  "  a  moderate 
dose  of  illusion  regarding  the  wealth  of  the  new  colony  " — 
Caneva's  proclamations — Modelled  on  those  of  Napoleon  in 
EgjTpt — Caneva  permits  swarms  of  spies  to  examine  his 
defences — Present  position  of  Italian  Army  in  Tripoli — A 
railway  to  run  down  the  fleet-footed  Arab,  to  pursue  the 
mirages  of  the  Desert     ......     Page  313 


CHAPTER    VI 

caneva's  neglect  to  disarm  the  ababs 

The  disarming  of  the  Arabs  a  measure  of  extreme  importance — 
Captain  Cagni  disarmed  some  of  the  town  Arabs,  but  could 
not  attend  to  the  oa/sis  Arabs — Natives  disarmed  at  Benghazi, 
Tobruk  and  Derna,  with  the  result  that  no  "  revolt  "  and 
no  "  repression "  in  those  places — General  Briccola 
searches  carefully  for  arms  at  Benghazi — Caneva  makes  no 
search  for  arms  in  Tripoli,  though  he  knows  that  oasis 
bursting  with  rifles  and  cartridges — He  is  afraid  to  disturb 
the  natives  at  their  tea — Imbecile  benignity  followed  by 
ferocious  cruelty — No  trial  for  Arabs  caught  with  arms  in 
their  possession  —  Italian  admissions  about  extraordinary 
stores  of  arms  and  ammunition  in  rear  of  their  line — 
Stupendous  carelessness  on  Caneva's  part — How  all  this 
military  material  came  into  possession  of  natives — Was 
looted  during  interregnum  after  Turks  left  and  before  • 
Italians  came — How  an  English  telegraph  operator  acted     .      331 


CHAPTER    VII 

HOW   THE   ARABS   GOT  IN  THE   ITALIAN   REAR 

Italians  admit  that  rear  attack  on  October  23rd  was  made  by 
fighting  Arabs  from  the  Desert  who  had  slipped  through 
Italian  line  during  Caneva's  "  benignant  period  " — Caneva 
warned  beforehand — How  I  went  outside  Italian  line  on 
October  22nd  and  found  myself  among  Arabs  who  made  rear 
attack  next  day — Those  Arabs  were  irregular  Turkish 
soldiers,  and  it  was  not  treachery  on  their  part  to  attack 
invaders  in  rear — Signer  Bevione  admits  that  rear  attack 
made  by  Arabs  who  had  slipped  through  line — Yet,  owing  to 
this  rear  attack,  peaceful  oasis  Arabs  are  accused  of 
"  treachery  "  and  massacred — All  Italians  now  accept  this 
view      ..........     347 


CONTENTS  XV 

CHAPTER    VIII 

THE    EVIDENCE   FOR   THE   MASSACRES 

Evidence  for  massacres  comes  from  people  who  were  in 
Tripoli  and  were  all  of  them  eye-witnesses  of  the  atrocities — 
Over  a  dozen  correspondents,  British,  German,  Axistria- 
Hungarian,  and  French — The  evidence  against  the  mass- 
acres comes  from  people  who  were  not  in  Tripoli  at  the  time 
the  atrocities  are  said  to  have  taken  place  .  •  Pctge     360 

CHAPTER    IX 

CONCLUSION  :    THE    CHURCH,    THE    SOCIALISTS 
AND    THE    WAR 

"  The  man  with  the  red  flag  "  will  eventually  be  the  only 
gainer  by  this  war — He  alone  has  kept  cool,  sane,  and  cynical 
— He  alone  has  maintained  all  along  that  Tripolitania  is  not 
worth  fighting  for — On  the  other  hand,  the  Monarchist  and 
ClericaUst  papers  have  indulged  in  a  regular  revel  of  jingoism 
and  blood — There  is  sure  to  be  a  reaction  against  this,  and 
the  Socialists  and  Anarchists  alone  will  benefit  by  the 
swing  of  the  pendulimi — The  attitude  of  the  Pope — The  jingo- 
ism of  many  bishops  and  clergymen — How  is  it  that  bishops 
and  clergymen  support  every  war,  while  non-Christian  and 
even  anti-Christian  organisations  work  in  favour  of  peace  ? 
— As  a  result  of  this  particular  war  Christianity  in  Italy  will 
probably  suffer — The  future  of  the  war — Opinion  of  Marshal 
von  der  Goltz  Pasha — 1812  saw  a  great  army  lost  in  a 
Desert  of  snow  :  shall  1912  see  a  great  army  lost  in  a 
Desert  of  sand  ? — The  prominent  position  which  the  story  of 
the  massacres  must  occupy  in  every  history  of  this  cam- 
paign .........      382 


APPENDIX 

The  Cult  of  the  Cannon,"  an  examination  of  Signer 
Marinetti's  philosophy  of  blood  and  iron — Kiplingism  trans- 
planted to  a  Latin  soil  and  grown  to  monstrous  and  dis- 
gusting proportions — Ferocious  militarism  really  a  sign  of 
decadence      .........     397 


Index      ..........     401 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACINO  PAOE 

The  Oasis  of  Death Frontispiece 

Lighthouse  smashed  by  shells  of  battleships  (photo  by  the  Author)  48 

The  Tomb  of  the  Karamanlis       .......  51 

Wretched  Turkish  gunboat,  Hunter  of  the  Sea    ....  52 

One  of  the  Turkish  "  forts."    Littered  with  Italian  shells  .        .  54 

Sunken  Turkish  Transport,  Derna        ......  69 

The  Landing  of  the  4th  and  5th  companies  of  the  11th  Ber- 

saglieri,  afterwards  cut  to  pieces  in  the  Oasis,  October  23rd  71 

The  Bersaglieri  marching  from  the  landing-jetty          ...  73 

The  only  survivor.     A  street  stricken  by  Cholera        ...  89 

The  Landing  of  the  Army 103 

Repelling  Turkish  demonstration  at  Gargaresh   ....  127 

Prisoners  brought  in  to  be  shot 147 

Battle  of  Sidi  Messri.     Machine-gun  at  work  in  the  Oasis  line  .  223 

On  the  way  to  execution 252 

Unarmed  "  hands-uppers " 259 

Burnt  Bedouin  encampment.     Naked  woman  left  to  die.     She 

was  dead  the  next  day  (photo  by  the  Author)       .         .         .  262 

Remains  of  burnt  Arab  village  (photo  by  the  Author)         .        -.  262 

Dying  Arab.     Sentinels  on  guard  (photo  by  the  Author)    .         ,  265 
Soldiers  jeering  at  dying  naked  Arab  woman  whom  I  found  dead 

at  the  same  spot  on  the  following  day  (photo  by  the  Author)  265 

Pulling  about  a  corpse  (photo  by  the  Author)      ....  266 

Murdered  Arab  villager  (photo  by  the  Author)    ....  266 

Arab  carrying  his  old  mother  (photo  by  the  Author)  .         .         .  268 

Dying  Arab  girl  (photo  by  the  Author) 268 

Murdered  Arab  (photo  by  the  Author) 275 

Examining  a  corpse  to  see  if  it  needs  another  bullet  .         .         .  275 
Ai-ab  women  and  children  brought  in  from  the  Oasis  over  the 
dead  bodies  of  their  own  kinsfolk.     At  some  distance  in 
front  marched  a  little  Mohammedan  boy  carrying  an  impro- 
vised Red  Cross  flag 283 

A  pile  of  fifty  men  and  boys 286 

Minaret  disguised  with  palm-fronds  so  as  to  prevent  it  serving 

as  a  mark  for  Turkish  artillery 297 

The  Great  Panic.     Soldiers  lining  flat  roofs  of   houses  next 

General  Caneva's  residence 310 

Joyous,  but  quite  unprotected,  Italian  camp  in  the  Oasis  during 
Caneva's  benignant  period  in  the  early  days  of  the  occupa- 
tion           337 


PREFACE 

"  What  necessity  is  there,"  it  may  be  asked,  "  for 
a  book  on  the  Italian  war  in  Tripoli  ?  The  reports 
of  the  battles — such  as  they  are — have  already  been 
given  very  fully  in  all  the  principal  newspapers  of 
the  world." 

My  reply  to  this  is  that  though  this  war  in  Tripoli 
has  been  conducted  in  the  twentieth  century,  and 
under  the  eyes  of  some  forty  newspaper  correspond- 
ents, no  fair  nor  complete  picture  of  any  portion  of 
it  has  yet  been  drawn. 

This  lacuna  is  largely  due  to  two  causes,  the 
official  censorship  of  Italy  and  the  unofficial  censor- 
ship of  the  Italians  who  are  for  one  reason  or  another 
in  favour  of  the  war. 

The  Italian  censorship  not  only  prevents  (and  quite 
rightly  of  course)  the  publication  of  all  military 
information  which  might  be  of  service  to  the  enemy, 
but  also  draws  the  blue  pencil  through  telegrams 
that  tend  to  make  the  Italians  depressed,  to  indicate 
how  endless  the  struggle  is  likely  to  be,  to  show  how 
well  the  Turks  and  Arabs  fight. 

So  merciless  and  sweeping  is  the  censorship  that 
we  find  the  whole  Italian  Press,  headed  by  the 
influential  "  Corriere  della  Sera,"  conducting  a 
campaign  against  it.  Even  the  extremely  jingoistic 
"  Giornale  d'  Italia "  complains  of  the  mutilazioni 
senza   pietd   apportate   dalla   censura   ai   dispacci   de 


xviii      ITALY'S   WAR   FOR  A   DESERT 

nostro   inviato    (pitiless    mutilations    of    our    corre- 
spondent's despatches  by  the  Censor). 

A  Milan  paper,  of  which  a  copy  lies  before  me  as 
I  write,  begins  gaily  in  its  largest  type  an  account 
of  a  battle  telephoned  from  Rome.  At  the  sixth 
line,  there  is  a  break  and  we  find  in  brackets  the 
words  "  tagliato  dalla  censura  "  (cut  off  by  the  Censor). 
Throughout  the  accounts  of  the  battle  of  Sharashett 
telephoned  from  Rome  to  the  great  provincial  papers, 
the  words  "  interrotto  dalla  censura  "  occur  nearly 
as  frequently  as  the  responses  in  a  litany. 

The  Government  acts  systematically  in  this  matter. 
It  puts  every  possible  obstacle  in  the  way  of  inde- 
pendent accounts  being  published  until  its  own 
optimistic,  official  account  has  been  printed  all  over 
the  country.  Naturally,  these  early  accounts  are 
the  ones  which  are  wired  abroad  by  foreign  corre- 
spondents and  which  fix  themselves  in  the  public 
mind  not  only  in  Italy,  but  elsewhere.  If  ever  there 
was  a  pitiable  spoon-fed  Press,  it  is  the  Press  of  Italy 
at  the  present  moment.  This  Tripoli  conflict  was 
largely  journalistic  in  its  origin,  but  the  journalists 
who  beat  the  jingo  drum  before  the  war  began  have 
been  consistently  treated  as  little  children  ever  since. 
The  first  account  of  the  battle  of  Sharashett,  on  M^hich 
they  were  compelled  to  rely,  was  a  strongly  "doctored" 
official  account  which  did  not  speak  of  that  breaking 
of  the  Italian  line  by  two  hundred  and  fifty  brave 
Arabs,  which  was  the  feature  of  the  action,  but 
which  did  speak  of  the  capture  of  a  Turkish  flag  by 
a  bayonet  charge  which  never  took  place,  for  the 
flag  was  discovered,  after  the  battle,  under  a  heap 
of  Arab  dead  in  front  of  the  trenches. 

On  October  27th  the  "  Agenzia  Italiana  "  circu- 
lated a  semi-official  note  on  the  battle  of  the  26th. 


PREFACE  xix 

This  note  said  that  the  battle  was  "  almost  decisive." 
It  pointed  out  that  as  a  result  of  that  victory  the 
Arabs  of  the  interior  would  be  terrorised  by  the 
Italian  name. 

"  And  what  ought  to  fill  us  with  legitimate  pride 
and  patriotic  enthusiasm,"  it  added,  "  is  the  dash, 
the  indomitable  power  of  resistance,  the  irresis- 
tible heroism  of  our  soldiers  ;  the  magnificent  con- 
duct of  the  war  on  the  part  of  the  commander-in- 
chief  and  of  all  the  officers  ;  the  admirable  military 
organisation  which  we  have  been  able  to  show 
before  the  astonished  eyes  of  Europe  on  land  as 
well  as  on  sea." 

And  this  after  a  battle  in  which  some  of  the  Italian 
soldiers  threw  away  their  arms  and  fled  before  exactly 
two  hundred  and  fifty  of  the  enemy,  a  battle  so  un- 
satisfactory from  General  Caneva's  point  of  view  that 
the  Italians  retreated  next  day  over  a  mile,  with  the 
result  that  the  enemy  was  able  to  come  close  enough 
to  bombard  the  city  and  to  drop  shells  even  on  the 
residence  of  the  Generalissimo  himself !  But,  of 
course,  I  forget  that  this  retreat  was  due  "  to  the  efflu- 
vium from  the  corpses."    So  the  official  account  said. 

These  are  only  a  few  out  of  an  endless  list  of  in- 
stances which  I  could  give  of  the  Italian  Govern- 
ment's mendacity  and  suppression  of  the  truth  in 
its  official  and  semi-official  bulletins  regarding  the 
present  war.  The  Japanese  Press  was  much  freer 
during  Japan's  great  struggle  with  Russia  than  the 
Italian  Press  is  during  this  campaign  with  a  few 
thousand  isolated  Arabs  to  whom  Turkey  can  send 
little  or  no  assistance.  The  Russian  commander-in- 
chief  in  Manchuria  was  far  less  dictatorial  in  his 
dealings   with   the   Press   than   the   present    Italian 


XX  ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

commander-in-chief  in  Tripoli  city.  Italian  corre- 
spondents who  communicate  too  abruptly  to  their 
newspapers  the  amount  of  the  Italian  losses  get 
twenty-four  hours  to  leave  the  country.  On  October 
31st  General  Caneva  expelled  two  Italian  correspon- 
dents, Signor  De  Luca  Aprile  of  the  "  Giornale  di 
Sicilia,"  and  Signor  Bordiga  of  the  "  Lavoro."  I  do 
not  know  how  many  he  has  deporwd  since  that 
time. 

I  have  already  pointed  out  that  even  the  most 
jingo  of  the  Italian  newspapers  have  protested 
day  after  day  against  the  methods  of  the  Censor. 
But  I  am  doubtful  if  the  abolition  of  the  censorship 
would  be  of  any  good  to  them.  The  intolerant 
Chauvinist  spirit,  which  they  themselves  called  into 
existence  and  carefully  fostered  during  many  years, 
is  now  their  master,  the  exacting  god  to  whom  they 
must  offer  incense.  If  an  Italian  journalist  told  the 
truth  about  the  war  he  would  be  expelled  from 
Tripoli,  lose  his  means  of  livelihood,  run  the  risk  of 
being  mobbed,  and  ultimately  find  that  he  had  got 
to  fight  some  half-a-dozen  duels  with  indignant 
"  patriots."  As  some  of  the  leading  English  and 
American  newspapers  were  represented  in  Tripoli  at 
the  outbreak  of  the  war  by  Italian  journalists  who 
also  contributed  to  Italian  newspapers,  the  English 
and  American  Press  suffered,  directly  or  indirectly, 
by  this  Chauvinist  menace  almost  as  much  as  the 
Italian  Press  itself.  And  when  we  come  to  the 
question  of  the  oasis  massacres  we  must  particularly 
bear  this  point  in  mind.  Even  when  a  foreign 
newspaper  was  represented  at  the  front,  by  one  of 
its  own  staff,  that  gentleman  saw  clearly  that  if  he 
wanted  to  stay  with  the  Italian  army  he  would  have 
to  close  his  eyes  to  that  army's  shortcomings.    Some- 


PREFACE  xxi 

times  the  paper  for  which  he  wrote  was  more  prudent 
than  he,  and,  not  wishing  to  lose  a  good  corre- 
spondent on  the  spot,  it  neglected  to  publish  any  of 
the  criticisms  on  the  Italians  which  he  sent. 

Because  Dr.  Walter  Weibel,  of  the  "  Frankfurter 
Zeitung,"  tried  to  tell  the  truth  about  what  was 
happening  in  Tripoli  it  was  made  impossible  for  him 
to  live  or  to  work  there,  and  on  November  20th  he  had 
to  leave.  On  November  26th  another  very  able  and 
conscientious  German  journalist,  Dr.  Gottlob  Adolf 
Krause,  of  the  "  Berliner  Tageblatt,"  was  bluntly 
told  by  the  head  of  the  Italian  Press  Bureau  that  he 
would  have  either  to  write  in  a  pro-Italian  style  or 
else  to  quit  the  country.  ("  Entweder  Sie  schreiben 
in  Zukunst  Italien  wohlwollende  Berichte,  oder  Sie 
werden  ausgewiesen.")  Many  examples  of  this  kind 
could  be  given.  In  fact,  on  this  subject  alone  a 
whole  book  could  be  written.  The  writer  of  such  a 
book  could  show  how  much  our  worship  of  "  first 
news  "  injures  our  Press.  In  some  armies  toadying 
and  the  ignoring  of  unpleasant  facts  are  essential 
to  journalistic  success,  and  I  foresee  that  in  foreign 
wars,  foreign  semi-official  journalists  will  in  course  of 
time  do  all  our  work  for  us,  because  their  telegrams 
will  come  first,  and  the  "  scoop  "is  an  idol  before 
which  all  editors  grovel. 

Even  here  in  England  the  wildly  intolerant  Chau- 
vinism of  the  Italians  leads  to  what  practically 
amounts  to  the  establishment  of  a  censorship  in 
this  country,  to  a  loading  of  the  dice  in  every  possible 
way,  to  a  continual  misrepresentation  of  the  state  of 
feeling  here. 

At  the  outset  of  the  war  some  "  patriotic  "  Italians 
sent  to  the  Italian  Government  a  congratulatory 
message  written  on  National  Liberal  Club  notepaper. 
b 


xxii        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

This  message  was  reproduced  in  Italy  as  a  proof 
that  the  National  Liberal  Club  was  with  the  brave 
Italians  in  their  spirited  and  unselfish  attempt  to 
release  the  Arabs  of  Tripolitania  from  the  intolerable 
yoke  of  the  Turk. 

On  my  return  from  Tripoli,  I  was  persuaded  by 
the  late  W.  T.  Stead,  that  noble-hearted  champion 
of  the  oppressed  in  every  land,  to  hold  a  meeting  in 
a  London  hall  with  the  object  of  telling  my  fellow- 
countrymen  how  the  war  in  Tripoli  was  being  carried 
on.  That  meeting  was  broken  up  by  seven  Italians 
who  had  come  there  purposely  to  interrupt,  and  who 
paid  no  attention  to  the  shouts  of  many  among  the 
audience,  one  of  whom  said  :  "  This  is  an  English 
meeting.  We  want  to  hear  what  the  speaker  has  to 
say.     If  you  don't  want  to  hear  him,  go  home  !  " 

Judging  by  a  telegram  which  appears  in  the  "  Neue 
Freie  Presse  "  of  March  18th,  the  same  methods  are 
being  employed  by  the  Italians  in  Munich  towards 
the  distinguished  Austrian  explorer  Otto  Artbauer, 
who  is  now  lecturing  in  Germany  on  the  Italian 
atrocities  which  he  saw  committed  in  Tripoli.  But 
I  notice,  by  the  by,  that  in  Germany  the  interrupters 
find  themselves  outside  the  door  in  a  marvellously 
short  space  of  time,  so  that  the  Bavarians  hear  all 
of  the  lecture  for  which  they  have  bought  tickets. 

While  writing  the  present  book  in  an  isolated 
house  on  the  Surrey  Downs,  I  was  interrupted  one 
day  by  the  arrival  of  three  gentlemen  who  had  come 
from  London  in  a  motor-car  and  wanted  to  speak 
to  me. 

They  were  Signer  F.  T.  Marinetti,  who  calls  him- 
self a  "  poet,"  and  who  said  that  he  had  just  come 
from  Tripoli  and  was  staying  at  the  Savoy  Hotel ; 
Signor  Boccioni,    who   is,   I   believe,    a    "  futurist " 


PREFACE  xxiii 

painter ;  and  another  gentleman  who  did  not  give 
his  name,  but  whom  I  suspect  to  be  the  London 
correspondent  of  the  "  Giornale  d'  ItaHa,"  The 
object  of  these  gentlemen  in  motoring  all  the  way 
from  London  was  to  fight  a  duel  with  me,  and  they 
managed  to  find  me  at  home  when  there  was  nobody 
else  in  the  house,  save  a  maid-servant. 

This  was  the  second  invitation  of  the  kind  I  have 
had  since  my  return  from  Italy.  I  told  them  that 
I  would  communicate  with  them  in  due  course  ; 
whereupon  one  of  them  threatened  to  attack  me  there 
and  then.  A  long  but  incorrect  account  of  the  inci- 
dent seems  to  have  appeared  in  all  the  Italian  papers, 
for  I  find  it  in  the  "  Nuovo  Giornale  "  of  Florence 
(March  12th)  as  being  telephoned  from  Rome, 
where  it  had  evidently  appeared  in  the  "  Giornale 
d'  Italia."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  all  that  happened 
was  that  I  promised  to  communicate  with  my 
challenger  at  the  Savoy  Hotel,  in  case  I  ever  felt 
anxious  to  fight  a  duel  with  him.  Then  the  "  poet  " 
got  on  his  legs  and  began  an  oration  which  lasted  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  and  afforded  me  a  good  deal  of 
amusement.  He  told  me  that  I  had  never  visited  the 
trenches  at  Tripoli,  having  probably  remained  con- 
cealed in  some  cantina  inside  the  to^vn.  He  said 
that  Mr.  Grant,  of  the  "  Daily  Mirror,"  had  invented 
the  atrocities  so  that  he  might  be  expelled,  since  he 
was  afraid  of  the  cholera  and  his  paper  would  not 
recall  him.  All  this  was  very  amusing,  and  the 
manner  in  which  my  visitor  strutted  about  the  room 
like  a  hero  in  melodrama  was  more  amusing  still. 
But  there  is  a  serious  side  to  this  question.  Is  it  not 
rather  impudent  of  foreigners  enjoying  the  hospi- 
tality of  this  country  to  thus  burst,  armed  I  presume, 
into  the  houses  of  men  who  criticise  the  conduct  of 


xxiv      ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

their  troops  in  Tripoli  ?  It  may  practically  amount 
in  some  cases  to  the  imposition  of  a  censorship. 
Newspaper  correspondents,  whose  business  requires 
them  to  be  frequently  abroad  and  sometimes  to  visit 
Italy  or  pass  through  it,  will  be  inclined,  once  they 
see  the  violent  intolerance  of  the  Italians  with  regard 
to  comments  on  this  war,  to  gloss  over  or  ignore 
altogether  anything  at  which  these  thin-skinned 
jingoes  would  be  likely  to  take  offence.  This  is 
especially  the  case  when  the  correspondents  in 
question  have  no  very  strong  feelings  either  way, 
and  are  only  concerned — in  case  they  visit  Italy  or 
Tripoli — in  having  a  "  good  time  "  and  in  getting 
their  news  out  first. 

The  result  of  all  this  is  that  we  have  got  a  rather 
one-sided  view  of  this  war.  The  news  about  it  which 
is  allowed  to  reach  the  world  is  the  result  of  a  careful 
system  of  selection,  mostly  carried  on  in  Italy  itself. 
The  Italian  editors  are  of  opinion  that  if  they  publish 
anything  calculated  to  jar  on  the  minds  of  the  jingo- 
ists  they  will  be  inundated  with  protests  and  their 
circulation  will  suffer.  And  they  are  right  in  think- 
ing so.  Early  in  the  war  the  "  Daily  Graphic  " 
published  a  letter  from  an  American  archasologist, 
Mr.  Richard  Norton,  who  had  been  excavating  in 
Cyrenaica  and  who  denounced  the  Italian  raid,  as 
he  had  a  perfect  right  to  do.  The  entire  Press  of 
Italy  immediately  set  upon  him  with  a  deafening 
howl  of  indignation.  Columns  appeared  daily  for 
weeks  in  every  paper  in  Italy  denouncing  the  wicked- 
ness, the  mendacity  of  Signor  Norton,  and  the  treason 
of  the  "  Graphic  "  in  publishing  his  letter.  All  over 
Italy  subscribers  to  the  "  Graphic  "  stopped  their 
subscriptions  on  account  of  "  le  ignobili  calunnie 
del  '  Graphic  '  contro  1'  Italia."    Reading-rooms  and 


PREFACE  XXV 

libraries  refused  to  let  it  enter  their  doors.  Public 
meetings  were  held  to  denounce  it.  Some  news- 
papers published,  day  after  day,  lists  of  people  who 
had  for  ever  renounced  the  "  Graphic  "  and  all  its 
works  and  pomps.  Finally,  the  "  Graphic  "  had  to 
come  to  terms  with  its  infuriated  Italian  readers  and 
to  publish  an  explanation. 

This  absurd  intolerance  of  criticism  is  as  noticeable 
in  the  Expeditionary  Army  as  it  is  in  Italy.  The 
Censor  at  Tripoli  refused  to  let  pass  a  harmless 
phrase  of  Mr.  Bennet  Burleigh's  to  the  effect  that 
"  though  the  disembarkation  of  the  Italian  troops 
on  October  12th  had  been  conducted  with  very 
creditable  efficiency  and  speed,  British  marines  could 
probably,  owing  to  their  greater  experience  in  such 
matters,  conduct  it  even  better."  The  Censor 
objected  to  its  being  said  that  the  British  tar  was  in 
any  respect  better  than  the  Italian.  He  wanted  no 
criticism,  but  only  praise,  praise,  praise, — bucket- 
fuls  of  it. 

Herr  von  Gottberg  tried  to  send  to  the  "  Lokal- 
Anzeiger"  a  message  to  the  effect  that  "the  Italian 
Press  has  probably  given  a  more  pessimistic  view  of 
the  Turkish  position  than  the  facts  of  the  case 
warrant."  This  was  at  the  time,  just  after  the 
landing  of  the  expedition,  when  the  most  vapid 
nonsense  was  circulated  about  the  extremities  to 
which  the  Turks  were  reduced,  when  it  was  asserted 
in  the  Italian  papers  that  they  had  no  water,  little 
food,  hardly  any  cartridges,  and  were  hanging  around 
Bumeliana  simply  because  they  wanted  to  get 
something  to  drink. 

Nevertheless,  that  phrase  about  the  Italian  Press 
had  to  go  out.  The  Censor  would  not  allow  it  to  pass 
on  any  account. 


xxvi       ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

About  the  middle  of  October  Renter's  corre- 
spondent sent  an  impartial  and  accurate  summing-up 
of  the  situation,  in  which,  while  bestowing  very  high 
praise  on  the  Italians,  he  ventured  to  dwell  on  the 
difficulties  in  front  of  the  invaders,  especially  the 
difficulties  of  a  march  into  the  desert.  "  It  can  only 
be  said,"  he  declared,  "  that  the  Italians  have  entered 
upon  a  gigantic  undertaking  without  calculating 
sufficiently  the  means  necessary  for  overcoming  all 
the  obstacles  which  they  are  bound  to  encounter  and 
without  foreseeing  the  enormous  expenses  which 
they  will  have  to  face." 

Because  he  dared  to  say  this  the  Roman  Press  was 
furious  with  him.  The  semi-official  "  Tribuna " 
(October  18th)  declared  that  the  statement  which  I 
have  just  quoted  "  is  contrary  to  all  that  has  been 
written  up  to  the  present  in  the  Italian  Press  and 
in  the  foreign  Press,  and  is  also  in  clear  contrast  with 
the  evidence  of  facts." 

The  "  Tribuna  "  published  this  just  and  moderate 
message  under  the  heading  of  "  Renter's  imaginings," 
and,  personally  attacking  Renter's  agent,  it  hinted 
that  the  difficulties  he  experienced  in  getting  to 
Tripoli  had  rendered  him  unable  to  hold  the  balance 
even. 

And  here  I  might  stop  just  for  a  moment  to  show 
what  the  Italians  want  to  be  written,  what  they 
themselves  write  about  the  Tripoli  adventure. 

Signor  de  Felice,  the  famous  "  Socialist  "  deputy 
from  Sicily,  who  also  acted  as  a  correspondent  of 
the  "  Messaggero  "  in  Tripoli,  wrote  a  letter  which 
appeared  in  that  paper  on  October  19th  describing 
"  the  manner  in  which  our  troops  are  advancing  into 
the  interior."  The  troops  are  going,  he  said,  in 
three   columns,    one    column    by   Tripoli-Misura   to 


PREFACE  xxvii 

Tagiura,  Sidi  Ben  Nur  and  Gazr-Gefari,  "an  old 
fortified  castle  in  which  there  was  a  respectable  Otto- 
man garrison  which,  on  hearing  of  the  arrival  of  our 
troops,  fled  in  great  haste  and  joined,  it  is  said,  other 
Turkish  forces  which  have  gone  in  disorder  towards 
the  interior."  "Another  column  marched  on  Gharian, 
which  may  be  called  the  capital  of  the  Gebel.  It  has 
traversed  Ghea,  an  oasis  rich  in  water  ;  and  Cars-el - 
Azizie,  a  most  fertile  place,  also  abundantly  supplied 
with  potable  water." 

But  the  gem  of  De  Felice's  article  is  the  statement 
that,  by  the  time  his  letter  will  have  appeared  in 
print,  this  latter  column  "  will  already  have  reached 
Gharian."  .  .  .  Anche  questa  guarnigione  probabil- 
mente  fuggird  alV  arrivo  delle  nostre  truppe.  ("  This 
garrison  also  will  probably  fly  before  our  troops.") 
This  amazing  deputy  adds,  in  conclusion,  that  "  the 
fugitives  will  not  delay  long  before  surrendering." 

A  glance  at  the  map  of  Tripolitania  will  show  that, 
at  their  present  rate  of  progress,  the  Italians  will  take 
about  fifty  years  to  get  to  Gharian — unless  they  go 
as  prisoners.  There  are  already  nearly  one  hundred 
Italian  prisoners  there  and  in  Fezzan,  and  the  collec- 
tion may  grow. 

De  Felice,  I  might  remark,  is  the  discoverer  who, 
after  having  driven  in  a  carriage  out  to  Sidi  Messri 
and  seen  some  blades  of  grass  {qualche  filo  d"  erba)  and 
a  plain  covered  with  absolutely  useless  scrub,  rushed 
back  to  Tripoli  and  wrote  for  the  "  Giornale  di 
Sicilia"  a  glowing  report  on  the  agricultural  possi- 
bilities of  the  new  "  colony,"  winding  up  with  the 
exuberant  telegram  :  "  We  have  visited  the  desert : 
all  the  land  most  fit  for  cultivation." 

Now,  if  a  Socialist,  Radical,  Little-Italy  deputy 
talks  like  this,  what  must  we  expect  of  the  extreme 


xxviii    ITALY'S   WAR   FOR  A   DESERT 

jingoes  and  imperialists  ?  As  I  want  to  avoid  as 
much  as  possible  the  reproach  of  making  this  book 
one  of  rollicking  humour,  I  refrain  from  quoting  the 
imperialists  on  the  commercial  possibilities  of  Tripoli- 
tania  unless  where  it  is  absolutely  necessary. 
My  readers  would  be  bound  to  get  the  impression 
that  I  was  quoting  from  some  wild  skit  on  the  war, 
that  I  had,  by  some  mistake,  got  hold  of  an  Italian 
political  adaptation  of  "  Alice  in  Wonderland." 

I  shall  give  still  another  instance  of  the  incredible 
intolerance  of  the  Italian  Press  on  the  subject  of 
Tripoli.  As  his  despatches  from  Tripoli  at  the  time 
of  the  massacres  shoAv,  one  of  the  most  pro-Italian  of 
the  foreign  correspondents  with  General  Caneva's 
force  in  October  last  was  the  war-correspondent  of 
"  The  Times." 

I  do  not  mean  that  this  gentleman  suppressed  the 
truth  out  of  deference  to  Italian  susceptibilities.  I 
mean  that,  as  a  military  man  himself  who  had 
combated  savage  or  half-savage  tribes  on  the  Indian 
frontier  and  in  other  parts  of  the  empire,  his  sympa- 
thies were  with  the  professional  soldiers,  the  white 
men,  the  Europeans,  and  not  with  the  irregular  and 
possibly  treacherous  natives  who  wore  no  uniform 
and  whose  officers  had,  most  of  them,  been  to  no 
recognised  military  school. 

But  occasionally  this  correspondent  felt  obliged  to 
drop  a  friendly  word  of  criticism,  and  that  word  of 
criticism  made  the  Italians  wild. 

Even  so  well-balanced  a  paper  as  the  "  Corriere 
della  Sera"  (October  19th)  describes  one  of  his 
messages  as  "  grotesque  malignity."  This  was 
because  he  had  said  that,  in  the  first  night  attack 
on  Bumeliana,  the  Turks  had  only  twenty  men, 
whereas  the  Italian  correspondents  had  placed  the 


PREFACE  xxix 

number  at  five  hundred.  As  will  be  seen  in  the 
following  narrative,  the  precise  number  was  fifteen. 
"  The  Times  "  correspondent  had,  as  usual,  been  too 
favourable  to  his  brethren,  the  professional  soldiers. 

When  the  same  journalist  courteously  begged  the 
Italian  Press  not  to  lose  its  sense  of  proportion,  since 
the  war  was,  after  all,  a  small  one,  of  no  military 
importance  to  the  world  at  large,  the  "  Ora  "  of 
Palermo  (October  20th)  cited  this  statement  as 
showing  "  il  maV  animo  del  corrispondenti  esteri  verso 
i  colleghi  italiani."  My  friend  Mr.  Percival  Phillips 
w^as  scoffed  at  because  he  prophesied  that,  owing  to 
the  way  in  which  the  Italian  soldiers  were  allowed  to 
drink  water  from  the  public  fountains  and  to  eat 
unripe  fruit,  cholera  Avould  soon  make  its  appearance 
in  the  Italian  camp — as  it  did. 

Italy  is,  in  short,  the  militant  suffragette  of  the 
nations.  She  breaks  diplomatic,  international, 
hygienic,  and  strategical  laws  as  Miss  Christabel 
Pankhurst  breaks  windows,  and  then  she  raises  an 
ear-splitting,  hysterical  yell  if  anybody  ventures  to 
criticise  her,  even  if  any  friend  and  accomplice 
attempts  to  tell  her  the  right  way  to  do  it.  She  goes 
cruising  in  the  ^Egean  with  her  fleet  exactly  as 
Mrs.  Pankhurst  goes  cruising  in  the  Strand  with 
her  hammer.  By  making  herself  a  general  nuisance 
and  exposing  us  to  the  risk  of  a  Balkan  war,  Italy 
wants  to  worry  Europe  into  making  Turkey  give  her 
Tripolitania. 

I  must  admit,  however,  that  here  and  there  in 
Italy  the  voice  of  reason  is  sometimes  heard.  Signor 
Mario  Borsa,  the  chief  editor  of  the  "  Secolo,"  wrote 
on  one  occasion  to  the  "  Tribunali  "  a  powerful  letter 
in  which  he  denounced  the  spectacle  which  his  country 
presented  to  the  world,  "  the  petty  and  undignified 


XXX        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

spectacle  of  a  people  excitable,  nervous,  as  incapable 
of  ignoring  vulgar  attacks  as  of  tolerating  judicious 
criticism."  "  We  are,"  continued  the  same  writer, 
"  the  spoilt  children  of  praise.  For  fifty  years  the 
world  has  only  had  caresses  for  us.  .  .  .  This  is  an 
imperialism  of  a  new  species."  "  We  have  lost  our 
tempers,"  he  says  in  another  place,  "  on  account  of 
the  hostile  language  of  the  foreign  Press.  We  have 
grown  heated  to  such  an  extent  that  we  have  only 
made  ourselves  ridiculous.  We  have  prohibited 
foreign  correspondents  to  go  to  Chiasso  to  send  off 
telegrams.  We  have  censored  and  held  back  their 
messages.  .  .  .  We  have  seen  our  ministers  and  our 
generals  engaged  in  controversies  with  telegraphic 
agencies  and  with  foreign  journalists.  We  have  read 
in  the  '  Tribunali '  that  our  ambassadors  ought  to 
take  legal  action  against  the  newspapers  which 
defame  us." 

But  these  voices  were  few  and  far  between  ;  and 
even  editors  who  took  Signor  Borsa's  point  of  view 
were  compelled  to  continue  feeding  the  Frankenstein's 
monster,  the  Chauvinistic  public  opinion  which  they 
had  been  "  forming  "  for  the  past  five  years.  In  their 
accounts  of  the  bombardments  of  undefended  villages 
they  had  to  employ  terms  of  praise  which  would  be 
extravagant  if  applied  to  the  victor  of  Trafal- 
gar. In  their  descriptions  of  the  timid  and  even 
cowardly  advances  of  their  troops  on  land  they 
actually  compared  themselves  with  the  Japan- 
ese and  with  old  Bliicher.  In  their  selection  of 
letters  from  the  ranks  they  confined  themselves  to 
the  reproduction  of  bogus  or  censored  letters  of 
the  usual  ultra-patriotic  type.  It  has  always  been 
the  usual  soldier  laddie  writing  to  the  usual  white- 
haired  mother,  and  saying  the  usual  things  about 


PREFACE  xxxi 

dying  for  his  country  and  his  king.  Now,  the  great 
majority  of  the  letters  must  be  of  a  very  different 
kind,  for  the  great  majority  of  the  soldiers  are  dis- 
gusted with  this  war,  and  have  sometimes  to  be  kept 
at  their  posts  during  battle  by  officers  standing  over 
them  with  revolvers. 

And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  "  Avanti "  does 
publish  some  soldiers'  letters  which  are  of  anything 
but  the  usual  stereotyped,  goody-goody  sort.  Take 
the  following  from  the  "Avanti "  of  November  24th. 
It  is  an  extract  from  a  letter  written  to  his  brother 
by  a  soldier  who  took  part  in  the  battle  of  Shara- 
shett : 

"  Believe  me  when  I  tell  thee  that  I  have  led  a 
dog's  life  of  it  for  days  and  days.  It  is  some  ten 
days  now  since  we  have  had  an  attack,  but  to-day, 
just  as  I  began  to  write,  we  had  one  for  about  ten 
minutes.  I  was  ill  for  six  days,  but  the  doctor 
said  I  was  shamming  and  I  had  to  work  all  the 
same.  We  have  no  roof  over  our  heads  day  or 
night.  We  left  Leghorn  on  October  2nd,  and  since 
then  I  have  not  had  a  change  of  linen  and  have  no 
other  clothes  than  these  on  my  back.  The  Turks 
have  taken  the  rest.  I  assure  thee,  dear  brother, 
that  it  would  be  better  for  me  if,  instead  of 
coming  to  the  war,  I  had  thrown  myself  into  the 
sea.  I  have  no  longer  any  hope  of  returning,  and 
will  surely  be  killed  by  illness  or  by  a  bullet.  .  .   . 

Sardi  Dario.     11th  Regiment  of  Bersaglieri, 

"  Che  bruttissima  cosa  e  la  guerra  !  "  ("  What 
a  most  ugly  thing  is  war")  writes  another  soldier 
from  Benghazi  to  his  mother.  "  In  this  country 
one  has  to  suspect  everything  and  everybody. 
One  has  to  suspect  the  weather  and  the  inhabit- 


xxxii      ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

ants.  As  I  write  this  note  the  wind  of  the  desert 
has  been  blowing  for  twenty-four  hours.  Imagine 
a  great  rain  of  very  fine  sand  which  prevents  you 
from  opening  your  eyes,  which  beats  upon  your 
face  with  an  extraordinary  violence,  which  enters 
into  your  ears  and  nostrils  and  through  the  open- 
ings of  your  clothes  and  into  your  shoes  so  that 
it  pricks  you  like  pin-points.  Naturally  I  can  put 
nothing  in  my  mouth  while  the  storm  lasts,  for 
the  food  and  the  bread  are  covered  with  sand. 
Through  holes  in  the  tent  which  serves  us  as  a  very 
bad  place  of  shelter,  the  sand  penetrates  until  at 
night  one's  face  is  so  covered  with  it  that  one  has 
to  get  up  every  now  and  then  to  let  the  sand  fall 
off.  Last  night  the  wind  was  so  strong  that  it 
blew  down  the  tent  in  which  I  lay  with  four  com- 
panions, tearing  loose  the  pegs  which  had  fastened 
it  to  the  ground.  You  can  imagine  the  confusion 
into  which  we  were  then  plunged.  We  were  almost 
completely  covered  by  sand,  and  it  took  us  all  our 
time  to  extricate  ourselves  by  holding  on  to  the 
date-palms.  In  spite  of  all  this,  and  much  more 
that  I  cannot  write  at  this  moment,  my  health 
is  good,  but  I  assure  thee  that  these  fatigues, 
this  perpetual  strain  which  I  am  compelled  to 
undergo  here,  will  have  indelible  effects  on  my 
future  health  and  will  shorten  my  existence.  Oh  ! 
how  often,  finding  myself  alone  at  night  with  five 
or  six  men  under  my  personal  responsibility, 
[during  the  rainy  season  some  weeks  back]  deluged 
with  water,  without  any  resting-place,  with  nothing 
but  mud  to  lie  down  in,  with  rain  pouring  down 
on  me  in  bucketfuls — how  often  have  I  not  longed 
for  that  godsend  which  will,  I  hope,  at  length  set 
me  free — a  rifle-bullet  through  the  brain  !  " 


PREFACE  xxxiii 

This  is  hardly  the  spirit  of  Ancient  Rome  to  which 
the  Italian  Nationalists  are  so  fond  of  appealing, 
but  it  is  the  spirit  of  the  Italian  troops  in  Tripoli- 
tania  at  the  present  moment.  Nay,  even  these  letters 
do  not  represent  the  depths  of  their  misery,  gloom, 
and  disillusionment,  for  in  the  first  place  the  worst 
letters  are  not  confided  to  the  newspapers  lest  they 
get  the  writer  into  trouble,  and  in  the  second  place 
even  the  "  Avanti  "  is  compelled  to  pander  some- 
what to  the  craze  for  militarism  which  has  invaded 
Italy.  In  the  "  patriotic  "  drivel  which  he  sometimes 
sends  from  the  front,  the  Tripoli  correspondent  of 
the  "  Avanti  "  is  quite  as  bad  as  his  Italian  colleagues. 
He  would  probably  have  been  expelled  from  Tripoli 
long  ago  as  "  unpatriotic"  had  he  written  in  a  more 
subdued  key. 

I  may  seem  in  the  following  narrative  to  be  anti- 
Italian  and  pro-Turk,  but  I  believe  that,  on  the 
whole,  I  am  fairly  impartial.  I  sympathise  with 
the  Arabs  because  they  are  fighting  very  bravely 
for  their  country,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  I  am  com- 
pelled to  rely  for  many  of  my  facts  on  Italian  papers, 
either  directly  or  indirectly.  The  only  papers  I 
could  get  in  Tripoli  were  Italian,  so  that  in  some 
instances  I  may  possibly  do  injustice  to  the  Arabs. 
The  Italians  have  practically  a  monopoly  of  the 
news  about  this  war,  for  the  Turks  are  soldiers,  not 
writers.  Very  few  foreign  correspondents  care  to 
expose  themselves  to  the  fatigues  and  dangers  in- 
cident to  a  stay  at  the  head-quarters  of  Nesciat  Bey ; 
and  for  information  regarding  some  incidents  in  the 
campaign  we  are  compelled  to  rely  almost  entirely 
on  Italian  sources.  Not  a  single  Turk  or  Arab  of 
the  two  gallant  bands  which  twice  broke  the  Italian 
line  ever  returned  to  tell  the  tale,  and  all  the  deeds  of 


xxxiv     ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

heroism  which  they  performed  during  their  last 
desperate  struggles  in  the  oasis  will  never  be  known. 
Unknown  also  will  be  all  the  acts  of  treachery  and 
cowardice  of  which  the  Italians  were  guilty  during 
these  oasis  fights.  We  know  some  of  them,  but  we 
shall  never  know  all.  On  the  other  hand,  we  get 
a  wealth  of  detail  about  Italian  heroism  ;  and  as 
these  narratives  come  from  the  pens  of  the  ablest 
journalists  in  Italy,  they  are  very  readable,  very 
seductive.  And,  of  course,  there  was  on  the  spot 
the  subsidised  newspaper  which  is  a  usual  feature 
of  such  cases.  In  this  case  it  was  the  "  Eco  di  Tripoli," 
a  journal  subsidised  by  the  Italian  Consulate  in 
order  that  it  might  "  servire  alia  propagazione  dell' 
idea  nazionale  e  alia  conquista  morale  degli  arabi." 
Bravely,  indeed,  did  the  editor  uphold  the  banner 
of  Christian  civilisation  among  those  benighted 
Infidels.     His  name  was  Moses. 

In  Italy  itself  we  have  the  great  poet,  Gabriele 
d'  Annunzio,  working  with  all  his  might  in  order  to 
create  a  wholly  false  impression  about  this  war. 
Hence  I  say  that  in  the  following  narrative  I  give 
the  Arabs  no  more  than  they  are  entitled  to. 

There  are  some  classes  of  people  to  whom  these 
pages  will  make  no  appeal.  They  will  make  no 
appeal  to  military  men,  who  believe  that  the  elastic 
term  "  military  exigency  "  covers  every  species  of 
crime  and  barbarity  in  time  of  war. 

They  will  make  no  appeal  to  the  Englishman  who 
has  caught  in  some  way  or  other  the  microbe  of 
Italian  jingoism.  There  are  some  such  Englishmen. 
They  live  in  Italy,  or  they  write  books  about  that 
country,  or  they  trade  with  Tripoli,  or  they  have 
Italian  blood  in  their  veins,  but  I  find  that  so  far  as 
the  present  war  is  concerned  it  is  hopeless  to  argue 


PREFACE  XXXV 

with  them.     They  are  as  bhnded  as  the  "  Giornale 
d'  ItaHa  "  itself. 

I  do  not  address  this  book  to  those  cold-blooded 
calculators  the  statesmen  and  publicists  who  want 
to  detach  Italy  from  the  Triple  Alliance,  or  to  help 
France  to  do  so,  who  want  to  make  the  Italian 
Dreadnoughts  neutralise  the  Austrian  Dreadnoughts, 
and  who  therefore  think  it  better  that  we  should  all 
keep  silent  in  this  country  about  Italian  doings  in 
Tripolitania.  When  they  look  out  on  the  continent 
of  Europe  these  gentlemen  can  only  see  one  nation 
there — Germany.  They  can  take  account  of  nothing 
else.  They  do  not  remember  that  Russia  was  the 
bugbear  to  exactly  the  same  extent  only  ten  years 
ago,  that,  previous  to  that,  the  bugbear  was  France. 
They  do  not  realise  that  Germany  may  be  our  ally 
to-morrow.  Then,  there  are  people  who  think  that 
we  should  keep  a  politic  silence,  and  get  Italy  to  pay 
for  it  by  conceding  us  some  advantages  in  Egypt. 
There  are  people  who  helped  in  the  unification  of 
Italy,  and  who  are  therefore  loath  to  believe  that 
unified  Italy  can  do  wrong.  There  are  people  who 
are  dazzled  by  Italy's  literature  and  art,  by  her  old 
cities,  her  superb  twilights,  the  bewitching  beauty  of 
her  hills  and  coasts,  the  irresistible  charm  of  her 
people,  by  her  tremendous  past.  There  are  Catholics 
who  object  to  any  criticism  of  the  Italian  soldier 
because  many  of  the  expeditionary  troops  went  to 
the  Sacraments  before  they  embarked  at  Naples, 
and  because  the  army  in  Tripolitania  is  well  provided 
with  Franciscan  chaplains.  Again,  there  are  people 
in  England  who  believe  that  the  Turk  is  fair  prey, 
that  there  is  no  harm  in  driving  him  out  of  Europe 
and  Africa,  and  that,  in  the  course  of  driving  him 
out,  no  atrocity  can  possibly  be  committed.    Lastly, 


xxxvi    ITALY'S   WAR   FOR  A  DESERT 

there  are  people  who  favour  the  ItaHans  now,  because 
the  Itahans  favoured  us  in  the  South  African  war. 
Lord  Roberts  seems  to  be  one  of  these  ;  on  no  other 
grounds  can  I  explain  his  pronouncement  last  Novem- 
ber on  a  question  about  which  he  had  no  direct 
knowledge.  This  distinguished  soldier  must  have 
been  unconsciously  biased  by  the  fact  that  his  own 
proceedings  in  the  Transvaal,  so  much  criticised  at 
the  time  by  a  certain  section  of  English  opinion, 
were  defended  by  Italians. 

To  all  these  classes  of  my  countrymen  I  make  no 
appeal.    This  book  is  not  written  for  them. 

Happily,  however,  they  comprise  only  a  very 
small  proportion  of  the  British  nation.  They  do  not 
form  one  per  cent  of  the  great  mass  of  fair-minded, 
impartial  men  and  women  who  say  to  me  :  "  Don't 
mind  in  the  least  whether  Italy  was  with  us  or  not 
in  the  South  African  war,  whether  she  will  leave  the 
Triplice  or  stay  in  it,  whether  she  will  make  us  more 
secure  or  not  at  Cairo.  Just  tell  us  what  happened 
in  Tripoli  in  October  1911." 

And  that  is  what  I  shall  try  to  do. 

Despite  my  denunciation  of  the  Italian  papers, 
I  must  thank  them  for  much  of  the  non-contro- 
versial material  contained  in  the  following  pages. 
I  must  also  thank  the  "  Daily  Mirror  "  for  allowing 
me  to  use  its  excellent  photographs.  And  I  must 
express  my  acknowledgments  to  the  "  New  York 
World,"  the  "  Westminster  Gazette,"  and  the  "  Daily 
News  "  for  permission  to  use  material  contributed 
by  me  to  their  columns. 


PART    I 


CHAPTER    I 

IL  NAZIONALISMO 

To  most  Englishmen,  there  are  two  surprising  things 
in  the  present  Tiirko-Itahan  conflict.  The  first  is 
why  this  conflict  should  have  taken  place  at  all.  We 
cannot  understand  the  state  of  mind  which  made 
not  only  possible,  but  even  popular  in  Italy,  this  war 
which  seems  to  us  in  England  one  of  the  worst  cases 
of  international  highway  robbery  that  have  occurred 
during  the  last  fifty  years.  In  the  second  place,  we 
cannot  fully  understand  the  state  of  mind  in  the 
Italian  expeditionary  army  which  made  possible  the 
awful  events  of  October  23rd-28th  last. 

These  explanations  I  shall  endeavour  to  give  in  the 
following  pages,  and  though  they  may  render  this 
book  somewhat  dull,  they  will,  I  hope,  throw  some 
light  at  the  same  time  on  a  dark  and  intricate  subject. 

To  begin  with  the  state  of  mind  in  Italy  itself, 
which  made  this  war  in  Tripoli  possible. 

In  the  first  place,  Italy  has  nursed  a  sentimental 
claim  on  this  Turkish  vilayet  for  more  than  a  gener- 
ation. This  claim  was  based  on  the  fact  that  Tripoli 
is  only  a  day's  sail  from  Sicily,  and  that  it  was 
formerly  a  Roman  province.  I  need  not  point  out 
that  these  reasons  are  thin  enough,  for  England  was 
also  a  Roman  province,  and  the  English  colony  of 
Malta  is  nearer  to  Tripoli  than  any  part  of  Sicily. 

But,  of  course,  there  were  other  causes.     Almost 


4  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

unobserved,  a  new  Chauvinist  party  has  been  growing 
up  during  the  last  few  decades  in  Italy,  The  members 
of  this  party  call  themselves  Nationalists.  Their 
opponents  call  them  the  Young  Turks  of  Italy,  but 
they  do  not  deserve  the  name.  The  men  who  over- 
threw Abd-ul-Hamid  are  made  of  far  sterner  stuff. 
The  Nationalists  are  jingoists  of  an  extreme  and 
candid  type.  They  believe  in  war  for  war's  sake. 
They  believe  that  the  shedding  of  blood  makes  a 
nation  virile,  unifies  it,  intensifies  the  patriotism  of 
its  inhabitants.  Their  motto  is  :  "If  you  feel 
decadent,  go  out  and  murder  somebody."  They 
preach  this  extraordinary  doctrine  without  any 
attempt  at  excuse  or  palliation.^ 

It  is  difficult  to  understand  this  sudden  craze  for 
brute  force  on  the  part  of  the  weakest  of  the  Powers 
— a  nation  which  is  only,  indeed,  regarded  as  one  of 
the  Great  Powers  by  international  courtesy ;  a  nation 
which  owes  its  unity  not  to  its  own  exertions,  but 
to  the  sentimentality  of  Europe  ;  in  short,  a  petted 
and  artificial  nation  which  is  very  much  in  the  same 
position  as  modern  Greece.  It  is  extraordinary  to 
find  the  one  nation  in  Europe  whose  claims  to  respect 

1  "  We  wish  to  glorify  war, — the  only  health-giver  of  the  world," 
yells  Signor  Marinetti,  one  of  the  many  minor  poets  who  are  now 
thumping  the  jingo  drum.  "  [We  wish  to  glorify]  militarism,  patriot- 
ism, the  destructive  arm  of  the  Anarchist,  the  beautiful  ideas  that 
kill,  the  contempt  for  woman." 

In  the  Golden  Legend  we  are  told  of  a  rich  Prince  to  whom  Satan 
suggested  that  the  blood  of  a  young  maiden  would  cure  his  disease. 
So  has  Lucifer  suggested  to  Italy  that  a  blood-bath  will  rejuvenate 
her.  In  really  rich  and  powerful  empires  with  great  armies  or  vast 
colonial  possessions  an  imperialistic  group  has  its  uses,  but  Italy  can 
derive  no  possible  benefit  from  the  hysterical  poetasters  and  un- 
balanced officers  who  are  largely  accountable  for  this  war.  Of  their 
own  windy  "  patriotism  "  I  am  more  than  doubtful.  To-day  they  are 
chasing  Arabs  with  poems  and  revolvers.  To-morrow  they  may  be 
after  Victor  Emmanuel  with  bombs.  And  once  the  foolishness  of 
their  present  propaganda  is  exposed,  there  will  be  an  inevitable 
reaction  in  Italy  against  even  sane  and  moderate  patriotism. 


IL    NAZIONALISMO  5 

are  based  wholly  on  its  artistic  and  literary  achieve- 
ments suddenly  and  of  its  own  accord  "  rattling  into 
barbarism."  One  feels  sincerely  sorry  to  see  delicate 
and  gifted  Italy  abasing  herself  so  gratuitously  before 
the  brazen  idol  of  militarism.  The  light  and  gentle 
Ariel  prefers  to  be  the  heavy-handed  Caliban.  The 
graceful  stag  wants  to  be  fat  and  strong  like  the  bull. 

"  Italy,"  says  one  English  publicist,  "  Italy  the 
flower  of  our  western  world,  whom  we  so  loved  and 
pitied  fifty  years  ago.  It  is  well  that  we  should  be 
reminded  of  our  folly  in  that  we  believed  in  her  tears 
and  thought  that  liberty  would  be  a  cure  for  her 
secular  griefs.  Her  tears  are  dry  enough  now,  and 
she  stands  before  us  hard-eyed,  brazen-cheeked,  the 
harlot  of  Europe  boasting  with  loud  tongue  her 
shamelessness." 

And  not  only  has  she  made  the  world  dislike  her. 
Worse  than  that,  she  has  made  the  w^orld  laugh  at 
her.  Her  newspapers  use  the  most  inflated  language 
about  her  military  and  naval  prowess.  Her  generals 
refer  in  their  proclamations  to  the  ancient  Roman 
Empire.  But  at  the  same  time  her  armies  manifest 
a  ludicrous  timidity  in  the  face  of  an  enemy  much 
inferior  to  them  in  numbers  and  handicapped  in 
every  way. 

The  whole  mistake  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  clever 
young  litterateurs  and  the  enthusiastic  young  officers 
at  the  head  of  the  Nationalist  movement  have  de- 
ceived themselves.  They  imagined  that  Italy  had 
only  to  make  an  effort  in  order  to  transform  herself 
into  ancient  Rome.  But,  unfortunately  for  them, 
there  is  a  wide  gap  on  this  point  between  them  and 
the  soldiers  whom  they  command.  These  soldiers, 
on  whom  of  course  the  success  of  the  Tripolitan  ad- 
venture entirely  depends,   knew  nothing  of   Scipio 


6  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

Africanus  or  Hadrian,  and  have  no  wish  whatever 
to  distinguish  themselves  in  futile  battles  against 
the  Libyan  sands.  One  of  them  wants  to  be  left  in 
peace  on  his  Sicilian  vineyard.  Another  wants  to 
eventually  join  his  brother  who  has  a  barber's  shop 
in  New  York  and  is  earning  "  good  money."  A  third 
who  has  been  in  Chicago  wants  to  return  again.  The 
Nationalists  refuse  to  face  the  fact  that  many  things 
have  happened  since  the  time  of  Julius  Csesar,  that 
America,  for  example,  has  been  discovered. 

The  modern  Greek  jingoists  made  the  same  mistake 
when  they  insisted  on  waging  war  on  Turkey.  A 
handful  of  unbalanced  young  officers  and  poets  had 
got  heated  by  reading  of  the  conquests  of  the  ancient 
people  from  whom  they  believed  (mistakenly)  that 
they  were  descended.  They  remembered  Alexander 
the  Great  and  Xenophon,  but  forgot  about  the  long 
Byzantine  degradation  that  interposes  between  those 
great  figures  and  the  Greece  of  to-day.  Far  be  it 
from  me  to  condemn  all  such  revivals.  I  warmly 
approve  of  them  whenever  they  do  not  lead  merely 
to  the  copying  of  the  worst  features  of  ancient  civil- 
izations. Rienzi  was  a  noble  and  sympathetic  figure 
because  he  attempted  to  restore  the  better  features 
of  ancient  Rome  ;  but  I  have  no  sympathy  with 
those  who  think  that  they  are  walking  in  the  foot- 
steps of  great  men  when  they  are  only  copying  those 
men's  worst  defects.  They  remind  me  of  Dostoiev- 
sky's hero,  the  weak-minded  Russian  student  Ras- 
kolnikoff,  who,  for  the  sake  of  a  little  money,  battered 
out  the  brains  of  a  poor  old  woman.  He  always 
acted  on  the  principle  of  "  doing  as  Napoleon  would 
have  done,"  and  thought  that  in  this  case  Napoleon 
would  have  acted  with  vigour,  decision,  and  ruth- 
lessness. 


IL    NAZIONALISMO  7 

Giollitian  Italy  is  the  Raskolnikoff  of  modem  his- 
tory. She  attacks  a  poor  little  isolated  community 
of  Arabs  and  batters  them  with  cannon  because  she 
thinks  that  Ancient  Rome  would  have  done  the 
same.  The  Nationalists  were  convinced  that  the 
brutality  of  the  war  would  increase  the  vigour  of 
the  nation.  On  this  point  I  shall  allow  an  Italian 
to  speak,  that  sturdy  old  revolutionary,  Hamilcar 
Cipriani. 

"  They  want  a  great  victory,"  he  said,  in  reply 
to  an  interviewer,  "  but  how  can  they  possibly 
win  a  great  victory  in  Tripolitania  when  we  know 
that  Turkey  cannot  send  an  army  thither  owing 
to  the  fact  that  she  has  no  fleet  ?  The  Italian  jingo 
Press  has  been  flooding  the  country  with  effeminate 
twaddle,  with  silly  and  imbecile  gush  in  which  they 
magnify  the  most  insignificant  skirmishes  into 
great  victories,  in  which  they  characterise  as 
colossal  triumphs  combats  which  end  in  the  Italians 
prudently  retiring  within  the  range  of  their  naval 
guns.  This  has  rendered  us  a  laughing-stock  in 
the  eyes  of  all  the  world.  We  are  to-day  the  stock 
joke  of  international  humour,  which  represents 
us  as  so  many  Tartarins  hunting  lions." 

The  joke  would  not  have  been  complete,  however, 
without  its  jingo  poet.  And  a  jingo  poet  this  tragic 
jest  has  got  in  the  shape  of  Gabriele  d'  iVnnunzio. 
For  some  time  past  this  writer  has  been  rapidly 
developing  into  a  sort  of  Italian  Kipling — and  a  Kip- 
ing,  I  need  hardly  say,  is  out  of  place  in  any  but  a 
very  great  empire.  He  wrote  some  years  ago  a  book 
called  "  The  Ship,"  of  which  the  burden  was  im- 
perialism, expansion,  the  acquisition  of  colonies, 
the  taking  up  of  the  White  Man's  burden.     Since 


8  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

the  war  began  he  has  written  a  whole  volume  of 
poems  in  praise  of  it.  Imagine  writing  heroic  poetry 
about  the  "  victories  "  of  General  Caneva  !  The  latest 
news  is  that  D'  Annunzio  is  personally  going  to 
Tripolitania,  as  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling  went  person- 
ally to  South  Africa. 

Why  the  Italian  Government  went  over,  bag  and 
baggage,  to  the  Nationalists,  and  even  surpassed 
the  worst  of  them  in  flamboyancy  of  language,  is 
not  difficult  to  explain.  Ever  since  Italy  was  united 
her  rulers  have  been  determined  to  really  cenient  the 
various  communities  of  which  the  country  is  com- 
posed by  means  of  an  aggressive  war.  This  is  evident 
in  everything  they  did,  in  the  ugly  barracks  with 
which  they  disfigured  many  a  beautiful  landscape, 
even  in  the  aggressive  monument  to  Victor  Em- 
manuel at  Rome.  That  tasteless  production  was 
admittedly  intended  to  be  "  il  monumento  della  terza 
Italia";  and  travellers  must  have  noticed  that  its 
plinth  is  all  carved  into  warlike  emblems.  What  a 
much  nobler  inspiration  the  creators  of  "  the  third 
Italy  "  might  have  drawn  from  the  ara  pads  of 
Augustus,  now  in  great  part  exhumed  !  With  what 
simplicity  of  artistic  means  and  with  what  tasteful 
use  of  symbolical  figures  did  not  the  Rome  of 
Augustus  embody  the  idea  of  confident  and  pros- 
perous peace  ! 

Though  Cavour  said  that  "  Italia  fara  da  se," 
he  was  historically  wrong.  It  was  France,  and  to 
some  extent  England  and  Prussia,  which  made 
Italian  unity,  but  it  was  not  Italy.  It  was  Magenta 
and  Solferino,  and  not  the  battles  of  Garibaldi. 
Italy  therefore  felt  herself  in  much  the  same  position 
as  Greece.  She  had  started  her  career  with  the  fatal 
disadvantage   of   having  won   her   independence   at 


IL    NAZIONALISxMO  9 

the  hands  of  another  people.  For  the  last  forty 
years,  therefore,  it  has  been  the  great  aim  of  Italian 
statesmen  to  atone  for  this  defect  as  much  as  possible 
by  providing  her  with  a  Sedan,  with  some  victory 
which  would  lead  to  "  the  Re-Unification  of  Italy  " 
as  Mr,  Richard  Bagot  calls  it,  which  would  weld 
Romans,  Genoese,  Florentines,  Venetians,  Neapoli- 
tans, and  Sicilians  together  by  the  cement  of  common 
danger,  by  the  blood  and  iron  of  war,  and  lead  to  a 
union  very  much  more  intimate  than  the  artificial 
union  of  1870.  Hence  the  scheme  to  take  Tunis  and 
the  projected  raid  on  Albania.  Hence  the  unfortunate 
Abyssinian  adventure.  Hence  the  plans  of  Crispi  to 
seize  Tripolitania,  plans  which  would  probably  have 
been  carried  out  had  that  statesman's  last  Premier- 
ship lasted  a  few  months  longer. 

Another  reason  predisposed  the  Italian  Govern- 
ment to  adopt  the  Nationalist  programme.  That 
reason  was — Adowa.  It  was  necessary,  thought  the 
Government,  to  wipe  out  the  shame  of  Adowa. 
"  We  must  make  amends  before  all  the  world," 
says  Scipio  Sighele  in  his  recently  published 
book  "  II  Nazionalismo,"  "  for  our  cowardice  after 
Adowa." 

Reasoning  on  the  same  lines,  France  might  attack 
Switzerland  in  order  to  erase  the  memory  of  Sedan  ; 
but  in  everything  connected  with  this  African  raid 
the  Italian  Government  and  the  Italian  Nationalists 
have  a  style  of  reasoning  peculiar  to  themselves. 
Moreover,  they  never  seem  to  think  that  other 
nations  have  as  much  right  to  attack  them  as  they 
have  to  attack  Tripoli.  If,  seized  by  an  imperialistic 
frenzy,  Austria-Hungary  pushes  down  the  Dalmatian 
coast  from  Cattaro  and  makes  the  Adriatic  an 
Austrian  lake,  she  can  justify  herself  by  arguments 


10  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

innumerable  culled  from  Italian  Nationalist  poems, 
books  and  leading  articles. 

And  it  is  not  at  all  impossible  that  Austria-Hun- 
gary may  think  this  the  very  best  time  for  under- 
taking such  an  advance.  With  a  large  Italian  army 
locked  up  indefinitely  in  northern  Africa,  the  cir- 
cumstances could  not  well  be  more  favourable.  And 
for  Austria-Hungary  it  might  be  a  measure  of  self- 
protection.  The  Italian  Nationalists  who  preached 
the  Tripoli  crusade  have  preached  with  much  greater 
vehemence,  and  for  a  much  longer  time,  a  war  for 
the  recovery  of  Italia  Irredenta.  In  his  recent  book 
on  Nationalism,  that  high  priest  of  the  cult,  Scipio 
Sighele,  says  that  "  irredentismo  "  is  "  not  only  an 
indestructible  sentiment,  but  a  necessity  and  a  duty 
imposed  on  us  by  historical  rights,  by  economic 
interests,  by  strategical  considerations."  There  is 
now  accredited  to  General  Caneva's  army  an  Italian 
correspondent  from  Trieste  who  loudly  proclaims 
that  the  attack  on  Tripoli  is  only  a  rehearsal  for  an 
attack  on  Trieste,  and,  ludicrous  as  this  boast  seems 
to  be  under  the  circumstances,  it  certainly  expresses 
the  sentiments  of  all  the  Italian  Nationalists. 

Italy's  foolishness  in  adopting  the  "  big-stick " 
policy  is  all  the  greater  owing  to  the  fact  that  she 
herself  is  one  of  the  nations  most  likely  to  suffer 
from  an  all-round  adoption  of  that  policy  by  the 
European  Powers. 

If  there  is  any  nation  in  Europe  that  should  cling 
to  the  Garibaldian  tradition  of  always  fighting  against 
oppressors  wherever  they  are  found,  of  always 
assisting  the  weak  against  the  strong,  that  nation  is 
Italy.  Even  from  a  moral  and  educational  point 
of  view  Italy  will  lose  much  when  she  loses  the  old 
tradition. 


IL    NAZIONALISMO  11 

On  this  subject  I  shall  again  quote  Cipriani. 

"  The  greatest  infamy,"  says  that  old  revolu- 
tionist, "  the  most  un^^ardonable  crime  which  the 
monarchy  has  committed  by  means  of  this  pirate- 
raid  on  Tripoli  is  that  it  throws  to  the  dogs,  tramples 
in  a  sea  of  mud  and  blood,  our  beautiful  Italian 
tradition,  the  Garibaldian  tradition  which  makes 
us  shoulder  our  rifles  and  fight  whenever  there  is 
an  oppressor  to  combat,  a  right  to  vindicate,  a 
good  cause  to  defend,  even  outside  the  confines 
of  our  own  country,  too  narrow  for  our  thirst  for 
justice.  We  were  once  the  knights-errant  of  the 
ideal,  the  heroic  Don  Quixotes  of  the  nations,  and 
our  Dulcinea  was  called  Justice.  From  the  plains 
of  the  Rio  Grande  and  Montevideo  to  Poland, 
Greece,  the  Vosges,  Candia,  Cuba,  Albania,  in  every 
part  of  the  world,  the  gentle  Latin  blood  had 
watered  the  earth  with  a  beneficent  rain  of  gene- 
rosity, in  the  beauty  of  a  sacrifice  which  asked  for 
no  reward. 

"  This  is  the  true,  the  great,  the  noble,  the 
holy  Italian  Nationalism  to  which  we  should  have 
always  clung.  Six  months  ago  we  had  the  superb 
pride  of  being  able  to  say :  '  We  have  never 
oppressed  anybody.  On  the  contrary,  we  have 
given  the  flower  of  our  youth  to  break  the  chains 
of  the  oppressor  in  other  lands.' 

"  And  now  we  kill,  we  rob,  we  murder,  like  the 
worst  of  them.  We  applaud  a  rapacious  conquest, 
an  iniquity  which  masks  itself  in  the  name  of 
patriotism." 

With  the  "  fatalita  storica "  claim  of  Signor 
Giolitti  I  need  not  deal.  A  more  serious  reason  for 
the  adventure,  though  it  is  seldom  mentioned,  was 


12  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

the  low  esteem  in  which  the  Italians  are  held  by 
the  natives  all  over  northern  Africa.  The  warlike 
Nationalist  newspaper  correspondents  who  vi'^ited 
Tripolitania  before  the  war  wrote  violent  letters 
home  about  the  scant  courtesy  with  which  they  were 
treated.  One  of  them  complains  that  at  the  Custom- 
house, at  the  Castello,  and  in  all  the  public  offices, 
the  Italian  was  made  to  wait  last.  The  Englishman, 
the  German,  and  the  Frenchman  were  always  attended 
to  first,  while  "  the  descendants  of  the  Scipios  "  were 
actually  classed  with  the  Greeks,  the  Spaniards, 
and  the  South  Americans.  It  is  quite  possible 
that  this  was  one  of  the  unutterable  griefs  which 
finally  forced  Giolitti  to  take  the  field.  He  would 
make  the  insolent  Arab  tremble  at  the  name  of 
Rome. 

But  why  did  Italy  approve  of  the  Giolittian  pro- 
gramme ?  A  variety  of  reasons  might  be  given. 
All  the  so-called  "  Progressive  "  parties  had  grown 
stale  and  wearisome  to  the  nation,  and  had  entered 
upon  a  process  of  slow  decay.  The  war  quickened 
this  process,  and  the  people  cheered  the  war  because 
it  had  come  as  a  relief  to  them  after  ten  years  of 
class  friction  and  general  strikes  and  sectional  legis- 
lation. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  in  most  nations  we  find 
the  same  phenomenon.  There  is  a  swing  of  the 
pendulum  from  peace  to  war,  from  Gladstone  to 
Joseph  Chamberlain,  from  Joseph  Chamberlain  to 
Lloyd  George.  And,  moreover,  artistic  nations, 
which  are  regarded  by  the  world  as  nothing  more 
than  picture  galleries  and  playgrounds  for  jaded 
tourists,  have  moments  of  revolt.  They  are  over- 
mastered from  time  to  time  by  a  fierce  desire  to  show 
mankind  that  they  are  not  all  born  to  be  Cook's 


IL    NAZIONALISMO  13 

guides.  It  was  a  rebellious  mood  of  this  kind  that 
drove  Japan  into  the  Russian  War.  But  (and  this 
is  a  much  more  apposite  example)  it  was  also  such  a 
mood  that  drove  Greece  into  her  last  ludicrous  war 
with  Turkey. 


CHAPTER    II 

THE   BANCO   DI    ROMA 

I  MUST  admit  that  behind  this  conflict  are  a  great 
many  interests.  It  is  not  the  work  of  a  cHque.  Or, 
perhaps,  I  should  say  that  it  is  the  work  of  one  cHque 
which  has  "  roped  in "  a  great  number  of  other 
cHques.  It  may  even  be  called  a  national  war.  There 
was  a  general  disposition  among  civilians  to  make  the 
Government  employ  the  fleet  and  army  in  some 
brilliant  way.  The  great  economic  and  financial 
prosperity  of  northern  Italy  since  1900  made  a  large 
section  of  the  nation  anxious  for  the  Government 
to  assert  itself.  Thus  Italy  may  be  said  to  have  been 
ripe  for  an  adventure.  And  in  Tripoli,  the  conditions 
for  a  successful  and  not  too  dangerous  adventure 
seemed  ideal.  In  Tripoli,  too,  the  Italian  Govern- 
ment had  at  its  disposal  a  financial  institution  cor- 
responding to  the  Russo-Chinese  Bank  in  Manchuria 
and  the  Banque  de  Paris  et  des  Pays  Bas  in  Morocco. 
Here,  as  elsewhere,  financial  interests  supply  the 
key  to  the  situation.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  we  come 
on  the  trail  of  the  concessionaire  and  the  financier, 
so  familiar  in  all  recent  wars. 

The  institution  to  which  I  refer  was  of  course  the 
Banco  di  Roma,  a  vast  credit  concern  with  a  paid- 
up  capital  of  over  £4,000,000,  to  which  a  further 
£2,000,000  are  soon  to  be  added  by  the  absorption 
of  a  Ligurian  Bank.    For  many  years  past  the  Banco 

14 


THE    BANCO    DI    ROMA  15 

di  Roma  has  been  pacifically  penetrating  Tripoli. 
It  acquired  enormous  tracts  of  land  ;  it  established 
or  financed  corn  mills  and  other  industrial  under- 
takings ;  it  prospected  for  phosphates  and  minerals. 
The  director  of  the  Bank  was  a  very  able  business 
man, — Signor  Pacelli,  a  friend  of  Baron  Sonnino,  the 
well-known  Conservative  leader  and  proprietor  of 
an  ultra-Catholic  and  ultra-jingoistic  newspaper,  the 
"  Giornale  d'  Italia."  Signor  Pacelli  has  friends  in 
every  camp.  He  has  friends  even  in  the  Govern- 
ment, for  some  members  of  the  present  Cabinet  are 
financially  interested  in  the  Bank.  The  Italians 
bitterly  complained  of  the  obstacles  thrown  in  its 
way  by  the  Turks,  but  personally  I  cannot  sympathise 
very  much  with  the  Italians  in  this  matter,  since  the 
object  of  the  Bank  was  undoubtedly  to  sap  Turkish 
rule  in  Tripolitania  and  pave  the  way  for  the  entry 
of  the  Italians. 

The  Cecil  Rhodes  of  Tripolitania  was,  however,  a 
subordinate  of  Signor  Pacelli.  He  was  a  banker  called 
Bresciani,  whom  we  first  meet  with  in  Massaua. 
Having  failed  to  make  a  fortune  in  Italy's  only 
colony,  Bresciani  returned  to  Rome,  where  he  was 
warmly  recommended  to  the  Banco  di  Roma  as  a 
suitable  person  for  establishing  new  branches  in 
Tunisia  and  Tripolitania.  Signor  Bresciani  visited 
both  countries  and  brought  back  a  report  to  the 
directors  of  the  Bank,  who  at  once  entrusted  him 
with  the  work  of  opening  a  branch  in  Tripoli.  Bres- 
ciani therefore  returned  to  Tripoli,  and  having 
obtained  the  permission  of  the  Vali,  he  did  open  the 
establishment  which  has  been  to  some  extent  the 
cause  of  the  present  war.  Though  the  Turks  could 
not  prevent  the  bank  from  being  opened,  they  were 
not  favourable  to  it,  as  they  were  aware  from  the 


16  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

first  that  it  was  only  an  instrument  of  "  peaceful 
penetration,"  and  would  be  followed  in  due  course 
by  battleships  and  Bersaglieri.  Signor  Bresciani  did 
little  or  no  business,  but,  at  all  events,  he  bought 
off  all  his  enemies  among  the  Turks  and  Arabs  by 
means  of  monthly  salaries  and  promises  of  em- 
ployment, when  he  had  once  got  started.  To  the 
unpaid,  impoverished  Turkish  functionary  of  Hami- 
dian  days  the  Bank  came  as  a  veritable  godsend, 
but  it  was  rather  a  source  of  expense  to  Italy. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  it  enjoyed  the  assistance  of 
the  Italian  Government.  When  he  was  Minister  of 
Foreign  Affairs,  Signor  Tittoni  had  frequently  denied 
that  he  had  any  interest  in  the  Bank  or  any  intention 
to  acquire  Tripolitania,  but  one  assertion  was  prob- 
ably as  false  as  the  other.  Tittoni's  own  brother  is 
Vice-President  of  the  Bank,  and  if  that  institution 
had  had  only  its  own  resources  to  draw  upon,  it 
would  have  been  bankrupt  long  ago.  But  the 
Government,  that  is,  the  unfortunate,  overtaxed 
Italian  people,  were  behind  it. 

Various  scandals  indicated  clearly  the  connection 
between  the  Bank  and  the  Government.  One  was 
the  granting  to  the  Benghazi  and  Tripoli  branches  of 
the  privilege  of  issuing  postal  orders  in  competition 
with  the  local  Italian  post-ofRces  ! 

It  was  decidedly  lucky  for  the  Banco  di  Roma  that 
it  had  the  Italian  Treasury  behind  it,  for  all  its 
business  speculations  turned  out  badly,  and  in  this 
way  it  must  have  lost  several  millions.  Then,  the 
imprensa  diplomatica  di  penetrazione  (diplomatic  work 
of  penetration)  cost  an  enormous  amount  of  money, 
but  this  was  directly  met,  of  course,  by  the  Govern- 
ment. However,  "  work  of  penetration "  is  an 
elastic  term,  and  I  dare  say  many  people  feathered 


THE    BANCO    DI    ROMA  17 

their  nests  by  means  of  it  and  at  the  expense  of  the 
Italian  taxpayer. 

Meanwhile  the  fact  that  it  was  a  kind  of  Govern- 
ment department  instead  of  a  commercial  house  made 
the  place  impossible  from  a  business  point  of  view. 
If  you  went  thither  to  get  a  draft  cashed  or  to  get  a 
bank-note  changed,  you  found  yourself  in  the  pre- 
sence, not  of  ordinary  bank  clerks,  but  of  budding 
diplomatists  who  seemed  to  consider  it  necessary 
to  keep  you  waiting  a  considerable  time  before  they 
condescended  to  notice  your  presence  at  all.  And, 
naturally,  the  Bank  suffered  on  its  business  side. 
Its  solicitor  is  said  to  have  once  confessed  that  "  the 
books  were  in  such  a  state  of  confusion  that  he  defied 
the  best  book-keeper  in  the  world  to  make  head  or 
tail  of  them." 

Some  shareholders,  afraid  that  the  institution 
would  go  to  pieces,  insisted  from  time  to  time  on  a 
reorganisation  of  the  personnel  in  Tripoli.  As  a 
result  of  these  complaints,  the  inspectors-general  of 
the  Bank  came  from  Rome  in  May,  1911,  in  order 
to  investigate  matters  ;  but  just  at  that  time  Tripoli 
happened  to  be  also  invaded  by  a  party  of  jingoist 
Italian  journalists  come  yer  intraprendere  la  campagna 
in  favore  delV  occupazione  (to  open  the  campaign  in 
favour  of  the  occupation).  The  local  director  of  the 
Bank  accordingly  made  his  excuses  to  the  inspectors, 
saying  that  he  really  had  to  attend  to  the  newspaper- 
men first.  The  inspectors  acknowledged  the  justice 
of  his  excuse  and  returned  to  Rome  without  having 
examined  his  books. 

How  the  Bank  of  Rome  in  Tripoli  distributed  the 
money  which  it  spent  in  the  work  of  "  peaceful 
penetration  "  it  is  not  easy  to  see.  It  has  not  many 
"  bought  "   Arab   chiefs   to   show   for   its   huge   ex- 


18  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

penditure.  Prince  Hassuna  Karamanli  is  practically 
its  only  acquisition,  and  he  went  comparatively  cheap 
— 4000  lire  a  month. 

Of  course,  it  made  a  pretence  of  employing  itself 
very  diligently  in  legitimate  business.  It  bought 
skins,  ostrich  feathers,  eggs  ;  but  it  knew  so  little 
about  affairs  that  it  often  sold  those  articles  at  a 
lower  price  than  it  had  paid  for  them.  For  example, 
it  purchased  horses  for  40,000  lire,  and  sold  them 
in  Italy  for  25,000. 

It  owns  an  enormous  Esparto  Grass  mill,  the  most 
colossal  building  in  all  Tripolitania.  It  is  part-pro- 
prietor with  a  Signor  Baldari  of  an  oil  and  soap 
factory,  and  if  this  does  pay,  its  success  is  solely  due 
to  the  activity  of  Baldari.  It  is  proprietor  of  a 
sponge  factory,  which  flooded  the  market  with 
sponges,  but  had  a  formidable  competitor  in  an 
English  Sponge  Trust.  Now  that  Tripolitania  is 
part  of  Italy,  1  however,  there  will  probably  be 
protection  for  Signor  Bresciani's  sponges,  and  the 
intruding  English  article  will  be  kept  out  by  a  tariff 
barrier.  It  has  also  an  ice  factory,  but  the  local 
demand  for  ice  is  so  small  that  the  enterprise  is  not  a 
success.  It  established  electric  light  works,  but  the 
Turks  would  not  let  it  import  dynamos,  because  they 
were,  or  pretended  to  be,  convinced  that  dynamo 
was  only  an  abbreviation  of  the  word  dynamite.  It 
started  a  steamship  line  with  two  vessels,  for  which 
it  got  a  Government  subsidy  of  190,000  lire  a  year. 

Then  the  Bank  lost  an  immense  amount  of  money 
on  the  building  of  a  flour-mill  near  Benghazi  at  a 
cost  of  1,800,000  lire.  The  building  operations  should, 
at  most,  have  cost  no  more  than  300,000  lire. 

Beginning  work  with  a  plethora  of  employees^ 
the  mill  found  that  it  had  no  more  than  five  or  six 
^  Vide  General  Caneva's  proclamations  passim. 


THE    BANCO    DI    ROMA  19 

bags  of  wheat  to  grind  per  day.  Recommencing, 
moreover,  its  old  policy  of  playing  off  one  nation 
against  another,  the  Sublime  Porte  had  granted  to 
a  young  German  farming  expert,  Herr  von  Lochow, 
a  large  tract  of  land  near  Benghazi,  and  somehow  or 
other,  this  concession  proved  very  detrimental  to 
the  Bank's  expensive  flour-mill. 

No  wonder  that  Signor  Bresciani  began  to  long 
for  war  and  to  move  heaven  and  earth  in  order  to 
bring  it  speedily.  For  the  Bank  it  was  a  question 
of  war  or  bankruptcy  ;  and  now  that  war  has  come 
the  mill  is  very  busy  of  course,  as  it  grinds  all  the 
flour  used  by  the  soldiers.  This,  however,  is  a  tran- 
sitory business  and  the  time  will  probably  come  when 
it  will  have  to  revert  to  its  five  or  six  bags  a  day. 

A  deputy,  Signor  Caetani,  has  even  expressed  a 
doubt  in  the  Chamber  as  to  whether  those  five  or 
six  bags  will  come  in  future  from  Tripolitania. 
He  thinks  that  they  will  come  from  Odessa  !  But 
surely  this  mill  might  just  as  well  have  been  built 
in  Apulia  or  Calabria  where  it  would  at  least  have 
given  employment  to  Italians. 

The  Banco  di  Roma  was  much  displeased  with 
the  Ottoman  Government  because  that  Government 
refused  to  grant  it  any  monopolist  concessions.  To 
crown  all,  a  German  financial  syndicate,  headed  by 
Herren  Weickert  and  Encke,  established  in  Tripoli 
a  banking  concern  whose  operations  within  a  short 
time  exceeded  even  those  of  the  Banco  di  Roma. 
Signor  Pacelli  found  himself  very  soon  in  difficulties. 
Clearly  it  was  time  to  act.  It  was  time  for  Signor» 
Giolitti  to  declare  that  "  civilization  "  must  be  ex- 
tended to  Tripolitania. 

The  last  straw  so  far  as  Italy's  patience  was  con- 
cerned, was  the  Banco  di  Roma's  ruinous  speculations 


20  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

in  real  estate.  Always  believing  that  the  Italian 
occupation  was  at  hand,  the  Bank  had,  since  the 
beginning,  bought  up  vast  tracts  of  land  in  Tripoli- 
tania  and  in  Cyrenaica,  but  especially  in  Cyrenaica. 
For  this  land  it  always  paid  at  a  very  high  rate. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  year  1911,  when  serious 
doubts  were  entertained  of  the  conquest  ever  coming 
off,  a  large  portion  of  the  Bank's  Cyrenaica  land, 
bought  at  10  lire,  was  sold  at  the  ridiculous  price  of 
2  lire.    The  loss,  of  course,  was  heavy. 

The  occupation  saved  the  Bank  from  a  disaster 
which  could  not  have  been  otherwise  delayed,  and 
since  it  has  in  its  possession  nearly  all  the  reclaimable 
land  in  Tripoli  it  is  evident  that  its  gains  will  be 
colossal  and  that  those  gains  will  save  the  situation 
so  far  as  it  is  concerned. 

The  famous  Caneva  decree,  which  seemed  to  be 
intended  to  protect  the  natives  against  vampire 
land  speculators,  is  only  a  fiction.  It  is  well  known 
in  Tripoli  that  the  Banco  di  Roma  purchased  years  ago 
the  greater  part  of  the  reclaimable  land  in  Tripolitania. 
By  sanctioning  those  acquisitions,  the  Caneva  decree 
will  enable  the  Bank  to  compel  the  Government  to 
buy  in  the  near  future,  and  at  whatever  price  and  on 
whatever  conditions  the  Bank  demands,  the  lands 
which  private  speculators  will  wish  to  get  rid  of 
owing  to  the  fact  that  they  are  unsuitable  for  culti- 
vation. At  first  sight  the  decree  has  the  appearance 
of  being  directed  against  speculators,  but  it  is  not 
so  directed.  To  those  living  in  Tripoli  it  is  not  diffi- 
cult to  discover  the  real  aim  and  scope  of  this  edict. 

I  have  told  how  Signor  Bresciani  succeeded  in  the 
greajt  work  which  the  Bank  entrusted  him  with  when 
it  originally  sent  him  to  open  a  branch  in  Tripolitania. 
That  work  was  to  drag  Italy  into  the  vilayet,  so  that 


THE    BANCO    DI    ROMA  21 

the  Italian  name  should  serve  as  the  instrument  of 
his  speculations,  that  the  Italian  flag  should  be  his 
best  commercial  asset,  and  that  any  Italian  who 
criticised  his  enterprise  would  only  expose  himself 
to  the  danger  of  being  mobbed,  spat  upon,  and 
denounced  as  "  unpatriotic." 

Bresciani  was  the  promoter  of  the  Tripoli  enter- 
prise. At  present  he  is  practically  the  autocrat  of 
the  situation.  The  handful  of  his  countrymen  who 
supported  him  in  his  business  operations  now  enjoy 
an  unlimited  credit  at  the  Bank.  Prominent  among 
those  lucky  ones  are  Signores  Baldari  and  Belli. 
Hence  the  common  saying  in  Tripoli  that  Tripolitania 
is  ruled  by  the  three  B's — Bresciani,  Baldari,  and  Belli. 

These  men,  or  the  Bank  which  they  represent,  have 
had  a  monopoly  of  all  Governmental  work  since  the 
war  began.  They  supplied  the  rafts  and  bridges  used 
for  the  disembarkation  of  the  troops,  the  animals, 
the  food,  the  war  material.  They  constructed 
barracks  for  the  soldiers. 

To  them  or  to  the  Bank  every  kind  of  contract  is 
given — contracts  for  the  supply  of  furniture,  meat, 
flour,  wheat,  ice  ;  in  short,  for  all  the  innumerable 
things  required  by  an  enormous  number  of  soldiers, 
45,000  of  whom  are  in  Tripoli  alone. 

Several  independent  Italian  business  men  offered 
to  do  the  work,  but  were  refused,  and  the  refusal 
was  accompanied  by  the  explicit  statement  that  the 
Banco  di  Roma  supplied  everything  which  the  army 
or  navy  or  the  civil  Government  required.  They 
repeated  their  offer,  pointing  out,  at  the  same  time, 
that  they  would  undertake  to  do  the  work  cheaper. 
The  answer  was  always  the  same  :  "  No7i  importa. 
Cid  non  ci  commuove  "  (No  matter.  That  won't  have 
any  influence  on  us). 


CHAPTER    III 

ITALY,   GERMANY,   ENGLAND   AND  TURKEY 

It  now  seems  clear  that  the  Itahan  swoop  on  TripoU 
was  partly  due  to  a  fear  that  in  possible  re-arrange- 
ments of  African  colonies  due  to  the  Franco-German 
discussions  regarding  Morocco,  France  might  have 
cheerfully  invited  Germany  to  compensate  herself 
for  her  failure  to  get  Agadir  by  the  simple  process 
of  annexing  Tripoli.  Tripolitania  was  not,  of  course, 
France's  to  give,  but  really  great  Powers  have  some- 
times this  off-hand  and  generous  way  with  them 
when  other  people's  property  is  in  question. 

It  must,  indeed,  be  admitted  that  during  the 
Hamidian  regime  Tripoli  was  regarded  by  the  Powers 
almost  as  a  sort  of  No  Man's  Land  which  anybody 
was  entitled  to  annex,  and  that  each  of  them  was 
jealous  of  the  others  on  account  of  it.  Until  the 
Anglo-French  entente  was  concluded  France  dreaded 
an  English  seizure  of  Tripoli ;  and  at  the  same  time 
Italy  suspected  France  of  planning  an  eastward 
march  from  Tunisia. 

French  books  and  newspaper  articles  were  full 
of  references  to  England's  dishonourable  intentions 
with  regard  to  the  Gulf  of  Bomba,  a  Tripolitan  port 
within  a  day's  journey  of  the  Egyptian  frontier  and 
evidently  intended  by  nature  for  a  great  naval  station, 
an  off-set  to  Bizerta,  a  half-way  house  between  Malta 
and  Alexandria.     It  was  stated  again  and  again  by 

22 


ITALY,  GERMANY,  ENGLAND,  TURKEY  23 

responsible  French  writers  that  the  British  Fleet 
had  already  contracted  the  habit  of  using  the  Gulf 
of  Bomba  as  a  convenient  station  for  months  at  a 
time. 

The  Entente  Cordiale  put  an  end  to  all  the  French 
suspicions  of  Albion,  so  that  nothing  was  left  save 
the  Italian  suspicions  of  France.  Italy  felt  sure  that 
the  conquerors  of  Tunis  would  also  attempt  to 
conquer  Tripoli.  Consequently  she  made  desperate 
efforts  to  exclude  from  Tripolitania  all  commerce 
which  was  not  Italian.  She  did  not  want  any  people 
save  the  Italians  to  sell  the  Tripolitan  Turks  or 
Arabs  anything  at  all.  She  was  even  opposed  to 
any  but  Italian  missionaries  trying  to  convert  the 
natives  of  Tripoli.  The  French  Catholic  mission 
schools,  which  were  subsidised  by  the  Quai  d'Orsay, 
excited  her  darkest  suspicions,  and  she  tried  to  drive 
out  the  French  Marist  Brothers  and  the  French 
Sisters  of  St.  Joseph.  Had  she  possessed  any  influence 
with  the  Vatican  she  would  have  tried  to  make  the 
Pope  "  move  on "  these  Religious  to  some  other 
part  of  the  world,  but  not  possessing  any  such  handle 
she  erected  some  years  ago  a  great  laical  scuola  for 
boys  which  cost  her  an  enormous  sum  of  money  to 
start  with,  and  the  upkeep  of  which  has  since  cost 
her  80,000  francs  a  year.  The  work  of  the  Alliance 
Fran^aise  also  made  the  Italians  suspicious.  To 
counteract  it,  the  Italian  professors  taught  their 
pupils  not  only  to  love  the  Italian  language  and  the 
Roman  history,  but  also  to  hate  France  and  the 
French.  Italian  teachers  at  Homs  made  it  a  rule 
to  pour  contempt  on  an\i;hing  written  in  the  French 
language.  In  the  anti-French  campaign  the  Italians 
had  a  great  advantage,  for  the  only  foreign  language 
understood  in  Tripolitania  is  the  Italian  language. 


24  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

and  Italian  newspapers  are  practically  the  only  news- 
papers which  are  read  in  the  vilayet.  Now,  these 
Italian,  and  particularly  the  Sicilian,  papers  have 
distinguished  themselves  by  a  particular  animosity 
against  anything  that  looked  like  French  encroach- 
ment on  Tripoli.  They  even  attacked  French  archae- 
ologists who  had  obtained  permission  to  examine  the 
Roman  ruins  scattered  throughout  the  vilayet.  They 
feared  that  those  archaeologists  were  military  agents, 
precursors  of  a  Gallic  invasion — spies,  in  short. 
They  feared  that,  because  they  knew  that  all  their 
own  "  scientific,"  "  archaeological,"  and  "  commercial" 
missions  were  made  up  of  spies. 

But  Italy  was  afraid  not  only  of  France.  She  was 
also  afraid  of  the  English.  At  least,  she  feared  that 
we  were  about  to  obtain  in  the  vilayet  some  com- 
mercial interests  which  would  make  us  inclined — not, 
of  course,  to  take  the  country  ;  that  was  out  of  the 
question — but  to  oppose  any  disturbance  of  the 
status  quo.  Some  British  subjects  had  on  foot  quite 
recently  a  scheme  for  constructing  a  harbour  in 
Tripoli ;  the  Turks  were,  for  obvious  reasons,  ex- 
tremely favourable  to  that  scheme  ;  but  the  Italians 
were  not  inclined  to  wait  until  it  had  matured.  In- 
deed, the  "  Mattino  "  of  Naples  actually  attacked 
England  some  weeks  ago,  and  declared  that  she, 
England,  criticised  the  Italian  army  in  Tripoli  be- 
cause she  had  wanted  to  "  grab  "  the  vilayet  herself. 

But,  of  course,  it  was  Germany  who  was  the  great 
bugbear.  It  has  been  said,  in  fact,  and  with  a  good 
deal  of  truth,  that  Germany's  abrupt  despatch  of 
the  Panther  to  Agadir  led  directly  to  Italy's  abrupt 
descent  on  Tripoli.  In  the  chapter  dealing  with  the 
Banco  di  Roma  I  have  pointed  out  how  the  Sublime 
Porte  showed  especial  favour  to  German  enterprises  ; 


ITALY,  GERMANY,  ENGLAND,  TURKEY   25 

how  it  granted  to  Herr  von  Lochow  one  large  tract 
of  land  near  Benghazi  and  another  large  tract  near 
Tripoli ;  how  one  of  those  concessions  proved  very 
detrimental  to  an  Italian  flour-mill ;  how  a  German 
financial  syndicate  headed  by  Herren  Weickert  and 
Encke  established  in  Tripoli  a  banking  concern  whose 
operations  exceeded,  within  a  short  time,  even  those 
of  the  Banco  di  Roma  itself. 

Whether  Italy  was  really  afraid  of  a  German  coup, 
or  whether  she  only  pretended  to  be  afraid  of  it  in 
order  to  work  on  that  morbid  dread  of  Germany 
which  has  been  the  distinguishing  feature  of  Sir 
Edward  Grey's  foreign  policy,  this  will  not  be  know^n 
for  a  long  time,  will  perhaps  never  be  known.  But 
even  the  Socialist  "Avanti"  admits  that  "at  that 
moment  (September,  1911)  somebody  circulated  a 
rumour  of  possible  action  by  another  Power  at 
Marsa-Tobruk  ;  and  it  was  indubitably  Italy's  fear 
of  such  action  being  taken  that  precipitated  events 
and  hastened  our  disembarkation  on  that  coast. 
Indeed  the  very  first  troops  sent  from  Genoa  were 
destined  for  Tobruk." 

I  do  not  believe,  however,  that  Germany  ever 
nursed  any  designs  on  Tripolitania  or  on  any  part  of 
it.  Her  acquisition  of  a  port  there,  so  near  Tunis  and 
Egypt,  w^ould  be  a  casus  belli  with  both  France  and 
England.  That  the  Germans  afterwards  manifested 
a  good  deal  of  dislike  for  the  Italians  was  not  because 
of  thwarted  territorial  ambitions.  It  was  because  of 
the  false  position  in  which  Germany  was  placed  vis- 
a-vis of  her  Ottoman  protege  owing  to  the  hasty  action 
of  Italy.  And  it  was  also,  I  know,  because  of  sincere 
and  manly  indignation  with  the  Sicilians  for  their 
slaughter  of  the  innocent  oasis  Arabs  towards  the 
end  of  October.  Von  Gottberg,  the  "  Lokal-Anzeiger  " 


26  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

correspondent,  began  at  first  to  write  in  a  pro- 
Italian  vein,  but  a  few  weeks'  experience  of  Italian 
methods  of  warfare  made  him  first  criticise,  and  then 
hand  back  his  papers. 

I  am  doubtful  if  even  Italy  herself  seriously 
believed  that  Germany  would  attempt  to  seize  Tobruk. 
But  it  is  not  at  all  impossible  that  Italy  succeeded 
in  frightening  Sir  Edward  Grey  with  this  bogey  and 
in  thus  securing  his  assent  to  the  Italian  raid.  In 
the  March  number  of  the  "  Fortnightly  Review  " 
there  is  an  evidently  inspired  article  on  "  Lord 
Kitchener  in  Egypt,"  wherein  we  are  told  how  Sir 
Edward  Grey  was  hoodwinked. 

"  When  events  in  Morocco,"  says  the  writer  of 
the  article,  "  were  beginning  (last  summer)  to 
point  to  Germany's  failure  to  obtain  any  footing 
in  that  country,  there  was  some  reason  to  suppose 
that  the  Kaiser  would  turn  his  attention  to  Tripoli. 
The  Italians  therefore  felt  that  if  the  desired 
territory  was  not  to  slip  from  their  grasp  they 
must  seize  upon  it  without  delay. 

"  Preparations  for  war  were  hurriedly  made, 
and  already  in  the  early  summer  of  last  year  the 
plans  were  formulated.  The  events  of  July  showed 
the  Italian  statesmen  very  clearly  that  the  strong 
policy  of  England  and  France  would  require  all 
the  attention  of  Austria  and  Germany  for  the  next 
few  months,  and  that  the  moment  was  thus  op- 
portune for  a  European  interference.  Neither 
France  nor  Germany  were  likely  to  worry  them. 
England,  however,  had  to  be  reckoned  with,  for 
though  our  attention  was  fully  occupied  in  Europe, 
it  lay  in  our  power  to  make  the  Tripoli  expedition 
a  most  hazardous  affair  simply  by  permitting  the 


ITALY,  GERMANY,  ENGLAND,  TURKEY   27 

Turks  to  march  through  Egypt  to  the  seat  of 
hostihties.  Before  the  projected  expedition  could 
be  launched,  therefore,  it  was  necessary  for  Italy 
to  ascertain  the  attitude  of  England  and  to  obtain 
her  promise  to  hold  Egypt  neutral.  This  promise 
however,  could  not  be  lightly  given,  for  it  might 
lead  to  grave  complications  with  the  Porte.  Egypt 
is  a  vassal  of  Turkey,  and  is  under  the  obligation 
to  provide  the  suzerain  State  with  an  unlimited 
number  of  troops  should  she  require  them  ;  and 
had  the  British  not  been  the  occupying  Power, 
the  Nile  Valley  would  certainly  have  formed  the 
Turkish  base,  England,  therefore,  had  to  be 
consulted  with  regard  to  Tripoli,  and  her  attitude 
to  Italy  recognised  as  absolutely  friendly  before 
war  could  be  declared." 

The  writer  puts  this  as  an  inference  from  what 
happened  immediately  afterwards,  but  it  looks  un- 
commonly like  an  admission  of  Sir  Edward  Grey's 
complicity  in  the  Tripoli  raid. 

"  No  public  statement,"  the  same  writer  pro- 
ceeds, "  has  yet  been  made  which  would  indicate 
that  the  British  Government  made  any  agreement 
with  Italy  last  summer  ;  but  there  is  very  little 
doubt  that  some  sort  of  understanding  was  arrived 
at.  England,  it  would  seem  probable,  consented 
to  prevent  Turkish  troops  from  entering  Tripoli 
via  Egypt,  and  so  far  as  possible  to  put  a  stop  to 
all  gun-running  or  other  belligerent  enterprises. 
She  appears  to  have  undertaken  to  keep  Egypt 
absolutely  neutral  and  to  allow  the  Porte  no 
assistance  from  its  vassal.  The  granting  of  these 
concessions  to  Italy  is  clearly  indicated  by  our 
present  actions  in  Egypt,  which,  as  will  be  related 


28  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

below,  are  of  a  very  deliberate  nature  ;  while  the 
despatch  of  Lord  Kitchener  to  Cairo  and  the  out- 
break of  hostilities  as  soon  as  he  had  arrived  in 
his  new  abode  can  hardly  be  attributed  to  mere 
coincidence.  It  seems  quite  evident  that  our 
attitude  to  Italy  was  as  follows  :  '  Since  it  appears 
to  be  inevitable,'  said  we,  '  that  some  European 
Power  will  pounce  upon  Tripoli,  we  in  Egypt 
much  prefer  you  as  our  neighbours  to,  say,  the 
Germans  ;  and  though  we  do  not  wish  to  offend 
Turkey  by  actively  taking  your  part,  we  will  show 
our  friendliness  to  you  by  holding  Egypt  neutral. 
To  do  this,  however,  we  shall  require  to  send  a 
very  strong  man  to  Cairo,  and  you  must  promise 
not  to  declare  war  until  he  has  arrived  there.  In 
return  for  our  kindness  we  shall  expect  you  to 
play  a  friendly  part  towards  us  in  the  event  of  a 
European  conflagration.'  " 

Lord  Kitchener's  business  in  Cairo  was  therefore 
to  prevent  any  passage  of  Ottoman  troops  through 
Egypt,  or  any  assistance  being  given  by  the  Moham- 
medans on  the  Nile  to  the  Mohammedans  in  Tri- 
politania. 

Lord  Kitchener's  first  work  was  to  erect  a  series 
of  forts  along  the  Eastern  desert  line  of  the  Suez 
Canal  to  deal  with  the  possible  danger  of  an  Ottoman 
army  demanding  passage  through  the  Nile  Valley 
on  its  way  to  Cyrenaica. 

The  writer  of  the  article  cannot  refrain  from 
boasting  of  the  successive  tricks  played  by  his  hero 
on  the  credulity  of  Moslem  opinion  at  Cairo  and 
elsewhere  among  those  he  was  sent  to  cajole  into 
an  acceptance  of  the  wholly  unwelcome  neutrality. 
According  to   him,   Lord   Kitchener   on   his   arrival 


ITALY,  GERMANY,  ENGLAND,  TURKEY  29 

posed  not  only  as  the  friend  of  Islam,  but  also  of 
the  Turks,  sympathised  with  the  patriotic  plans  of 
assisting  them  with  men  and  money,  but  found  each 
attempt  in  turn  beset  with  so  many  difficulties  as  to 
amount  to  impossibility.  Where  cajolery  would  not 
serve,  hints  were  thrown  out  of  a  severer  nature,  of 
the  possible  necessity  imposed  on  him  by  his  Govern- 
ment in  case  of  non-compliance  with  British  policy 
of  increasing  the  army  of  occupation,  perhaps  even 
of  annexation.  As  a  first  measure  the  independent 
Press  was  at  once  gagged,  and  the  Nationalist  organ, 
the  "  Alam,"  which  persisted  in  giving  frontier  news 
and  inciting  to  a  disregard  of  the  neutrality,  found  its 
doors  closed. 

It  is  true  that  Sir  Edward  Grey  denied  in  the 
House  of  Commons  that  he  knew  of  "  the  declaration 
of  war  "  until  just  before  it  was  made.  But  it  seems 
impossible  that  he  knew  nothing,  through  the  British 
Ambassador  in  Rome,  of  the  Italian  plans  to  invade 
and  seize  the  North  African  vilayet.  Besides,  his 
amiability  towards  Italy  is  rather  suspicious.  When 
one  member  of  the  Triplice  annexed  two  Turkish 
provinces  which  she  had  long  administered,  and 
which  had  practically  become  part  of  her  territory, 
Sir  Edward  Grey  raised  a  furious  protest  and  nearly 
brought  about  a  European  war.  When  another 
member  of  the  Triplice  suddenly  invaded  an  African 
vilayet  to  which  she  had  no  claim  whatever.  Sir 
Edward  Grey  made  no  protest.  Our  Foreign  Office 
seems,  indeed,  to  be  actually  friendly  towards  the 
Italians,  for,  when  questioned  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
as  to  the  right  of  General  Caneva  to  treat  the  oasis 
Arabs  as  traitors,  it  declared  that  the  Italian  reprisals 
were  covered  by  the  acknowledged  rules  of  civilised 
war — a  statement  contrary  to  fact  and  contrary  (as 


■^' 


30  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

Mr.  E.  N.  Bennett  points  out  in  his  book  on  Tripoli) 
to  the  declaration  of  Lord  Derby  at  the  Brussels 
Conference  on  the  Rules  of  Military  Warfare,  in  1874. 
The  Italians  admit  that  the  British  Foreign  Office  has 
been  most  friendly  to  them  all  along,  and  the  best- 
informed  Italian  newspapers  published  in  October 
last  a  statement  to  the  effect  that,  in  a  communication 
to  the  home  Government,  Lord  Kitchener  deplored 
the  critical  attitude  of  the  British  Press  towards 
the  Italians  in  Tripolitania  owing  to  its  unsettling 
effect  on  the  minds  of  the  Egyptians. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  friendliness  of  the  British 
Government  towards  the  Tripoli  raid  has  had  an 
effect  on  certain  sections  of  the  British  Press,  more 
or  less  in  touch  with  the  Foreign  Office.  Take,  for 
instance,  "  The  Times,"  in  its  reference  to  the  crushing 
Italian  defeat  at  Bir  Tobras.  Discussing  that  dis- 
astrous retreat  and  the  failure  of  another  forward 
movement  on  the  part  of  General  Caneva,  "  The 
Times  "  correspondent  says  : 

"  The  Arab  sees  all  this,  sees  that  the  Italian 
positions  are  no  further  advanced  than  they  were  a 
month  ago,  and  that  Italian  troops  have  twice 
retired  upon  their  base  after  making  a  temporary 
forward  movement.  He  does  not  see  that  the 
Italians  are  being  cautious  and  leisurely  of  set 
purpose." 

This  last  sentence  betrays,  of  course,  an  evident 
bias,  for  Colonel  Fara  lost  his  way  in  the  desert,  and 
his  retreat  from  Bir  Tobras  ended  in  a  complete 
debacle,  the  desert  being  strewn  with  the  arms  and 
equipment  of  his  runaway  Bersaglieri.  It  is  to  this 
bias  that  we  must  look  for  an  explanation  of  "  The 
Times'  "    pose    of    coolness,    moderation,    and    im- 


ITALY,  GERMANY,  ENGLAND,  TURKEY   31 

partiality  with  regard  to  the  oasis  massacres  of 
October  23rd-27th. 

The  British  Government  and,  to  some  extent,  a 
portion  of  the  British  Press  seem  to  have  been 
petrified  into  silence  by  a  bogey-man  story  of  German 
designs.  The  Nationalist  and  financial  elements 
interested  in  the  war  seem  to  have  been  frightened 
by  the  same  story.  Whether  a  Machiavellian  Govern- 
ment invented  it  and  then  circulated  it  adroitly 
among  these  elements  so  as  to  prepare  the  proper 
atmosphere  for  the  adventure,  or  whether  the 
Nationalists  and  financiers  first  evolved  the  story 
and  then  believed  it  themselves,  is  a  matter  which 
I  shall  leave  to  the  future  historian. 

I  shall  now  say  a  few  words  on  the  position  of 
Turkey  in  this  matter. 

In  Abd-ul-Hamid's  time  nobody  seems,  when  the 
question  of  Tripoli  was  discussed,  to  have  regarded 
Turkey  at  all.  She  had  only  held  the  province  for  a 
quarter  of  a  century.  Unable  to  develop  it,  she  had 
hermetically  sealed  it  ;  and,  owing  to  its  distance 
from  Turkey,  to  its  isolation  between  European 
possessions,  and  to  Turkey's  lack  of  a  navy,  this  last 
African  vilayet  of  the  Sublime  Porte  was  regarded  as 
already,  for  all  practical  purposes,  lost  to  Constanti- 
nople. The  only  question  seemed  to  be — who  was 
going  to  get  it  ? 

The  Young  Turk  Revolution  in  Constantinople 
did  not  improve  matters  so  far  as  the  Turks  were 
concerned.  If  anything  it  made  them  worse.  The 
liberal  peoples  of  Europe  became  sympathetic,  but 
the  Chancelleries  were  anything  but  enthusiastic. 

The  Powers  felt  as  justly  irritated  with  the  Sick 
Man  of  Europe  as  greedy  heirs  might  feel  with  a  rich 
uncle  who,  after  making  a  will  in  their  favour,  going 


82  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

mad,  and  falling  sick  to  the  point  of  death,  suddenly 
recovered  his  health  and  the  use  of  his  reason.  If 
Abd-ul-Hamid  had  remained  supreme,  the  break-up 
of  Turkey  was  so  certain  that  her  heirs  could  await 
with  patience  that  cheerful  event.  But  once  she 
showed  signs  of  rejuvenation,  and  wanted  to  re- 
organise her  army  and  navy,  the  Powers  got  visibly 
distressed.  Austria-Hungary  grabbed  Bosnia-Herze- 
govina ;  Bulgaria  seized  a  Turkish  railway  and 
proclaimed  her  independence  ;  Greece  tried  to  collar 
Crete  ;  Italy  became  more  and  more  insistent  about 
her  "  claims  "  in  Tripoli. 

Why  Italy  did  not  act  when  Austria-Hungary 
acted  needs  some  explaining.  Did  Sir  Edward  Grey 
tell  her  that  her  doing  so  would  take  the  edge  off  his 
attack  on  Baron  von  Aehrenthal  ?  Or  had  she  mis- 
calculated, expecting  that  the  Stamboul  Revolution 
would  end  in  the  dismemberment  of  the  Ottoman 
Empire  ?  If  she  took  the  latter  point  of  view  she 
quickly  saw  her  mistake,  for  it  soon  became  apparent 
that,  under  the  new  regi?ne,  Turkey  was  likely  to  get 
stronger  rather  than  weaker.  An  able  and  well- 
educated  soldier,  Mahmud  Shefket  Pasha,  was 
rapidly  reorganising  the  army  and  re-arming  her 
fortresses.  He  had  first  to  begin  with  Constantinople. 
Then  he  went  on  to  Albania  and  Arabia.  In  a  short 
time  he  would  come  to  Tripoli,  and  once  he  had  filled 
that  vilayet  with  good  Turkish  troops  and  organised 
some  scheme  of  harbour  defence,  Italy's  chances 
would  be  gone  forever. 

Mahmud  Shefket  Pasha  has  been  bitterly  criticised 
for  not  having  taken  some  steps  to  protect  Tripoli 
against  the  Italian  attack  which  had  so  often  been 
spoken  of.  Perhaps  it  would  have  been  difficult  for 
him  to  have  put  the  vilayet  in  a  thoroughly  good 


ITALY,  GERMANY,  ENGLAND,  TURKEY   33 

state  of  defence  in  the  limited  time  at  his  disposal, 
for  he  had  first  of  all  to  protect  Constantinople  itself 
against  an  attack  by  the  Bulgarians.  He  had  only  a 
very  limited  amount  of  money  to  spend,  and  all  this 
money  was  required  for  the  reorganisation  of  the 
European  army  of  the  Sultan,  for  the  purchase  of 
arms  and  ammunition,  and  for  the  buying  of  new 
guns,  mines,  etc.,  for  the  Dardanelles  and  the 
IBosphorus.  The  troubles  in  Albania  and  Arabia  and 
the  expenses  which  their  suppression  entailed  post- 
poned still  further  the  military  reorganisation  of 
Tripolitania.  The  thing  could  not  be  done.  Time, 
money,  men  were  all  lacking. 

But  if  Shefket  Pasha  could  not  do  anything  to 
strengthen  Tripoli,  he  might,  at  all  events,  have 
omitted  to  weaken  that  vilayet.  He  did  weaken  it, 
however,  by  withdrawing  the  bulk  of  the  Tripoli 
garrison  for  service  in  Arabia.  His  object  in  taking 
the  Tripoli  soldiers  in  preference  to  the  soldiers  of 
Constantinople  or  Adrianople  was  because  the  Tripoli 
troops  spoke  Arabic  and  would  be  better  able  to 
campaign,  therefore,  in  Arabia.  Not  only  did  he  do 
this,  but  he  withdrew  further  detachments  of  troops 
from  Tripoli  to  fill  up  certain  cadres  in  the  European 
garrisons. 

Before  taking  these  fatal  steps  he  asked  the 
Premier,  Hakki  Bey,  if  he  could  guarantee  the 
absence  of  any  hostile  design  against  Tripoli  on  the 
part  of  Italy.  Now,  Hakki  Bey  is  a  soft,  pleasant, 
very  sociable  man  who,  among  many  other  languages, 
speaks  Italian,  French,  and  English.  He  had  been 
in  Italy  as  ambassador,  was  very  fond  of  the  Italians, 
and  had  been  quite  captivated  by  Signor  Tittoni. 
His  wife  is  an  Italian,  he  has  many  personal  friends 
in  Italy,  and  until  September  last  he  had  been  firmly 


84  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

persuaded  that  Italy  would  never  attack  Tripoli. 
He  accordingly  gave  the  Minister  for  War  the  fatal 
guarantee,  and  the  troops  were  withdrawn.  The 
result  was  that  in  October  last,  when  the  Italian  raid 
took  place,  the  strength  of  the  garrison  in  Tripoli  was 
lower  than  it  had  been  even  during  the  worst  days 
of  Abd-ul-Hamid,  lower  than  it  had  ever  been  since 
the  Turkish  conquest. 

Not  only  were  the  soldiers  removed.  A  good 
military  leader  was  also  recalled.  This  was  the  Vali, 
a  strong  and  brave  man,  Marshal  Ibrahim  Pasha, 
who  would  undoubtedly  be  an  ugly  customer  to 
tackle.  Signor  Galli,  the  Italian  Consul,  intrigued 
to  have  this  stubborn  old  soldier  removed  at  all 
costs.  Galli  had  no  difficulty  in  exciting  against  the 
Vali  all  the  local  Consuls,  mainly  a  weak-minded 
crew  of  diplomatic  derelicts,  who  were  originally  sent 
to  Tripoli  as  to  a  quiet  backwater  out  of  harm's  way 
by  their  respective  Governments.  Galli  also  intrigued 
against  Ibrahim  Pasha  both  at  Rome  and  Constanti- 
nople, and  finally  this  strong  man  was  recalled.  In 
his  place  was  left  Munir  Pasha,  a  feeble  old  gentleman 
with  no  military  knowledge  whatever.  Had  Ibrahim 
remained,  it  is  almost  certain  that  he  would  have 
re-entered  the  town  between  the  bombardment  on 
October  3rd  and  the  arrival  of  the  army  on  October 
11th,  in  which  case  he  could  probably  have  cut  to 
pieces  the  1800  sailors  who  held  the  outpost  line  on 
the  fringe  of  the  oasis. 

Other  reasons  induced  Italy  to  strike  when  she  did. 
Turkey  had  concluded  in  England  a  contract  for  the 
construction  of  a  powerful  fleet,  and  had  engaged  a 
British  Admiral  for  the  reorganisation  of  her  navy. 
In  the  eyes  of  Italy  these  were  very  serious  matters, 
for,  even  with  a  small  navy,  a  few  torpedo-boats,  and 


ITALY,  GERMANY,  ENGLAND,  TURKEY   35 

a  few  hundred  well-trained  naval  officers  Turkey 
might  be  able  to  do  fearful  damage  to  Italian  com- 
merce in  case  of  war.  From  Preveza,  which  is  at  the 
south  of  Epirus  and  within  sight  of  Italy,  a  few  good 
Turkish  torpedo-boats  could  hold  up  all  the  Italian 
merchantmen  in  the  Adriatic  ;  while  Italy's  colony 
on  the  western  side  of  the  Red  Sea  could  easily  be 
raided  from  Arabia  on  the  east.  Let  us  remember 
that  it  took  Italy  three  and  a  half  weeks  after  the 
delivery  of  the  ultimatum  before  she  had  completed 
the  disembarkation  of  all  her  troops  in  Tripoli.  Let 
us  remember  how  slowly  and  timidly  the  transports 
crept  south  in  complete  darkness  and  in  such  a  state 
of  "  nerves "  that  there  were  panics  among  the 
soldiers  several  times.  When  we  remember  these 
things  we  can  well  understand  how  fearful  the 
Italians  were  of  the  Ottoman  fleet  being  increased 
by  the  addition  of  a  single  unit. 

All  these  things,  taken  in  conjunction  with  the 
Morocco  negotiations  —  negotiations  which  might 
easily  end  in  Germany  getting  a  foothold  in  Tripoli- 
tania  by  way  of  compensation  for  fancied  losses 
elsewhere — all  these  things  decided  Italy  to  take  the 
brusque  course  which  she  actually  took.  That  she 
did  not  act  too  quickly  from  her  own  point  of  view 
is  shown  by  the  fact  that  on  the  very  day  after 
hostilities  were  declared,  several  Turkish  torpedo- 
boats  had  been  completed  in  English  ship-building 
yards.  Had  the  war  been  postponed,  these  boats 
would  have  now  been  in  the  hands  of  the  Turks.  As 
it  is,  the  British  authorities  have  temporarily  taken 
possession  of  them. 

Another  thing  that  alarmed  Italy  was  a  Turkish 
proposal  to  form  a  sort  of  great  territorial  army  among 
the  Arab  tribes  in  Tripolitania.    Italy  had  evidently 


86  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

got  to  strike  before  this  measure  was  carried  into 
execution,  but  it  was  rather  inconsistent  of  her  after- 
wards to  say  that  she  had  only  come  to  take  the 
Turkish  yoke  off  the  necks  of  the  Arabs. 

Why  Italy  ever  coveted  Tripoli  at  all  is  difficult 
to  explain.  Her  "  claims  "  were  that,  owing  to  the 
proximity  of  the  vilayet  to  her  southern  coast,  she 
would  be  seriously  weakened  and  menaced  from  a 
naval  point  of  view  in  case  Tripoli  fell  into  the  hands 
of  some  other  Power. 

Her  sentimental  claim  on  the  vilayet  because  it  is 
filled  with  Roman  remains  and  she  is  the  heir  of  the 
Scipios  need  not  be  taken  seriously,  for  there  are 
Roman  remains  in  many  parts  of  Europe.  It  must 
be  admitted  that  Italy  has  all  the  exiguous  foreign 
trade  of  the  vilayet ;  that  most  of  the  Europeans 
there  are  Italian  subjects  ;  and  that,  next  to  Arabic, 
the  Italian  language  is  the  most  spoken  in  Tripoli- 
tania — in  fact,  it  is  the  only  European  language 
spoken  there.  Still  other  reasons  are  the  desire  of 
the  army  chiefs  to  wipe  out  the  shame  of  Adowa,  the 
desire  of  the  monarchists  to  raise  the  prestige  of  the 
ruling  dynasty  by  some  great  conquest,  the  desire 
of  the  Government  to  turn  the  attention  of  Italians 
away  from  troublesome  questions  of  domestic  politics. 


CHAPTER    IV 

IS   TRIPOLI   WORTH   THE  TROUBLE? 

I  HAVE  endeavoured  to  show  the  skill  with  which 
the  Italians  attained  their  object.  By  a  wonderful 
series  of  intrigues  and  calculations  they  succeeded  in 
their  immediate  aim,  that  is  in  attacking  Tripoli 
when  the  garrison  there  was  at  its  weakest,  and  in 
bamboozling  the  Powers  and  especially  England  into 
keeping  silent.  In  Italy  itself  the  literati,  the  jour- 
nalists, the  military  men,  the  financiers,  the  Con- 
servatives, were  all  "  roped  in."  Even  the  Socialists 
were,  many  of  them,  gained  over  by  the  introduction 
of  a  Universal  Suffrage  Bill.  The  Socialists  did  not 
want  to  embarrass  the  Government,  as  if  that  Govern- 
ment fell  it  would  be  succeeded  by  a  Conservative 
Government  and  the  Suffrage  Bill  would  be  lost. 
The  Italian  Socialists  were  thus  to  some  extent  in 
the  position  of  the  Liberals,  and  even  of  the  Irish 
Nationalists,  in  the  British  Parliament  last  October. 
They  were  too  anxious  not  to  embarrass  the  Govern- 
ment. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  high  international 
morality,  we  need  not  speak  of  this  raid.  Inter- 
national morality  was  bad  enough  before,  but  Italy's 
action  in  Tripoli  has  made  it  worse,  and  Europe  may 
yet  have  good  cause  to  deplore  this  cynical  breach  of 
all  the  diplomatic  conventions. 

But  even  from  the  purely  material  point  of  view, 

37 


88  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

this  raid  was  a  mistake.  Practically  all  the  impartial 
authorities  who  have  examined  Tripolitania  say  that 
it  is  not  worth  the  expenditure  of  a  single  ten-inch 
shell.  Were  I  to  quote  all  that  has  been  said  on 
this  subject,  I  should  never  finish  this  chapter. 
But  I  shall  briefly  say  that  if  Tripoli  were  very 
valuable,  the  French,  who  have  examined  it  care- 
fully, would  long  ago  have  been  anxious  to  secure  it. 

M.  de  Mathuisieulx,  a  French  explorer,  thinks  that 
even  in  the  time  of  the  Romans,  Tripoli  cannot  have 
been  much  more  than  it  is  to-day,  an  enormous 
waste  of  bare  rock  and  sand. 

Colonel  Monteil,  another  French  explorer,  said  in 
1893,  that  Tripolitania  will  be  of  little  use  to  the 
Italians,  and  that  if  they  get  it,  they  will  be  sadly 
disillusioned. 

M.  Grossi,  a  professor  at  the  Diplomatic  School 
attached  to  the  University  of  Rome,  published  in 
1905  a  pamphlet  entitled  "  Tripolitania  and  Italy," 
in  which  he  said  that  from  an  agricultural  point  of 
view  Tripolitania  is  useless  and,  from  a  commercial 
point  of  view,  very  nearly  useless  owing  to  the  fact 
that  the  few  caravans  which  it  used  to  get  from 
Lake  Tchad  have  now  been  diverted  to  Egypt  and 
Tunis. 

But  the  best  proof  I  can  give  that  Tripolitania  is 
useless,  is  the  fact  that  when  the  Jewish  Territorial 
Organization  was  granted  permission  to  settle  in 
the  province  they  declined  the  offer  with  thanks, 
after  a  most  careful  investigation  of  the  whole  vilayet. 
Dr.  Gregory  was  one  of  the  five  gentlemen  who  con- 
ducted the  investigation.  Among  the  others  were 
Mr.  M.  B,  Duff,  an  engineer  with  an  expert  know- 
ledge of  water  supply,  and  Dr.  Trotter,  a  graduate  in 
agriculture   at    Edinburgh   who  had   farmed  in  the 


IS  TRIPOLI  WORTH  THE  TROUBLE  ?     39 

Sudan.  The  results  of  the  investigation  were  very 
disappointing.  "  Though  Cyrenaica,"  says  Dr. 
Gregory,  "  is  doubtless  the  most  fertile  province  of 
Tripoli,  we  had  reluctantly  to  report  that  the  country, 
owing  to  its  large  area  of  useless  land  and  its  insuf- 
ficient and  uncertain  water-supply,  was  quite  un- 
suitable for  extensive  agricultural  colonies." 

Dr.  Adolph  Vischer  is  equally  pessimistic.  He 
says  that  calculations  based  on  the  mineral  wealth 
of  the  soil  have  no  solid  basis,  and  he  quotes  Professor 
Gregory  and  M.  Pervinquiere  as  being  definitively 
incredulous  on  the  question  of  mineral  deposits 
either  in  Tripolitania  or  in  Cyrenaica.  He  does  not 
think  that  artesian  wells  would  be  much  good.  When 
he  was  in  Tripoli  last  year  he  met  a  Frenchman  who 
had  got  a  concession  for  the  construction  of  an 
artesian  well  beyond  the  Meshia  (desert),  but  who 
abandoned  the  work  after  sinking  the  shaft  to  a 
depth  of  240  feet  without  finding  any  trace  of  water. 

Naturally,  however,  the  Italians  are  very  opti- 
mistic about  the  future  of  Tripoli.  They  assert 
that  in  the  time  of  the  Romans  Tripolitania  was 
very  fertile,  and  think  that,  with  an  intelligent  system 
of  public  works  and  colonisation,  this  fertility  can 
be  restored.  But  there  are  in  Tripolitania  only  three 
zones  that  have  been  cultivated,  firstly  the  string 
of  maritime  oases  stretching  a  hundred  miles  or  so 
along  the  coast  ;  secondly  the  sporadic  patches  of 
olive  plantations  which  are  to  be  found  in  the  valleys 
on  the  northern  fringe  of  the  mountains  and  the  high 
plateaux.  Finally,  very  far  in  the  interior  and 
separated  from  the  coast  by  interminable  rocky 
solitudes  are  some  tracts  of  stony  land  in  the  valleys 
of  the  Soffedjia,  Ghirza,  Merdoum  and  Nefed. 

The  Romans  did  cultivate  these  three  zones,  but 


40  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

beyond  them  we  find  no  trace  of  ancient  remains, 
and  an  examination  of  the  Roman  ruins  shows  that 
the  level  of  the  land  is  much  the  same  now  as  it 
always  was.  On  this  point  the  testimony  of  M.  de 
Mathuisieulx  leaves  no  room  for  doubt  and  effectually 
disposes  of  the  theory  that  a  fertile  country  is  covered 
with  a  layer  of  sand  which  has  only  to  be  cleared 
away  in  order  to  restore  the  land  to  its  former  pros- 
perity. 

And  even  if  Italy  were  able,  at  immense  expense, 
to  reclaim  some  portions  of  the  desert,  would  it  not 
be  better  for  her  to  spend  that  money  at  home  ? 
The  preamble  of  the  Annexation  Bill  sets  forth 
harbours,  schools,  hospitals,  roads  and  railways  as 
already  in  course  of  construction  at  Tripoli.  Would 
it  not  have  been  better  to  begin  with  the  inhabitants 
of  Sicily,  Sardinia  and  the  Basilicata  ? 

The  Socialists  in  Italy  are  already  calling  attention 
to  this  matter.  The  "Avanti"  asks  why  Tripoli  should 
get  railways  before  large  districts  in  Italy  itself  which 
have  been  patiently  waiting  fifty  years  for  them. 
When  the  imperialist  fever  has  passed,  the  deputies 
for  these  districts  may  have  trouble  in  getting  re- 
elected, after  all  their  promises  about  railway  facilities 
for  their  constituencies. 

In  Apulia  the  peasants  are  so  poor  that  they 
cannot  buy  barrels  for  their  wine,  and  must  actually 
put  it  in  a  hole  in  the  ground-floor,  the  inner  surface 
of  the  hole  being,  of  course,  treated  so  as  to  render 
it  waterproof.  Italy  has  little  wealth  to  fall  back  on. 
Her  population  is  too  heavily  taxed  already.  In 
the  south  she  has  millions  who  are  as  ill-fed  and  as 
ill-educated  as  the  Bedouins  of  Tripolitania.  She 
has  a  vast  population  to  whom  bread  and  salt  are 
luxuries.   She  has  whole  provinces  where  the  illiterates 


IS  TRIPOLI  WORTH  THE  TROUBLE  ?     41 

number  70  per  cent  of  the  population.  In  the  villages 
south  of  Venice  drinking-water  is  brought  in  boats 
owing  to  the  neglect  of  the  authorities  to  provide 
water-works.  And  yet  a  good  irrigation  system  in 
that  country  would  cost  little  and  produce  good 
results.  In  Tripolitania  it  would  cost  much  and 
perhaps  not  succeed. 

The  Italians  think  that  Tripoli  will  be  a  good  outlet 
for  their  emigrants.  But  no  Italian  emigrant  will 
go  to  Tripoli  so  long  as  New  York,  San  Francisco 
and  the  Argentine  Republic  are  open  to  him.  The 
jingoists  say  that  Tripolitania  can  be  made  as  pros- 
perous as  Tunisia,  but  they  forget  that  though  close 
to  one  another  the  two  regions  are  as  different  as 
chalk  is  from  cheese,  Tunis  with  Algeria  and  Morocco 
being  placed  by  zoological  geographers  in  the  same 
region  as  Europe,  and  Tripolitania  in  the  Saharan 
region.  When  the  Italians  took  Eritrea  and  Benadir 
we  heard  the  same  prophecies  about  those  places 
attracting  Italian  emigrants.  We  heard  of  Italy 
pouring  into  those  places  the  "  exuberance  "  of  her 
population.  We  were  to  see  "  il  grandioso  fenomeno 
di  una  nuova  Italia  issuing  slowly  from  the  flanks  of 
the  great  common  Mother." 

Yet  the  deputy  Luigi  Luzzatti  now  admits  that 
neither  Eritrea  nor  Benadir  can  ever  attract  Italian 
emigrants,  "  cosa  che  molti,  anche  uomini  competenti, 
immaginavano  nelle  prime  ore  delV  entusiasmo  e  della 
illusione"  (a  thing  which  even  many  competent  men 
imagined  in  the  first  hours  of  enthusiasm  and 
illusion). 

It  will  be  the  same  thing  with  Tripoli.  No  Italian 
emigrant  will  go  thither,  so  long  as  there  is  such  a 
place  as  Chicago. 

Why  Turkey  should  feel  so  "  cut  up  "  about  the 


42  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

loss  of  Tripoli  is  not  at  first  sight  very  evident.  The 
vilayet  is  a  drain  on  her  none  too  abundant  resources. 
Some  of  the  Turkish  governors  have  planted  olive 
trees  in  the  favoured  spots,  but  in  spite  of  this,  the 
Sublime  Porte  knows  perfectly  well  that  there  is  no 
future  for  this  country,  which  the  Arab  devastations 
and  the  parched  winds  of  the  desert  have  for  ever 
ruined  from  the  agricultural  and  commercial  points 
of  view.  Despite  all  this  the  Turks  are  intensely 
sensitive  about  the  possession  of  Tripoli  because  this 
last  of  their  African  colonies  is  their  only  fulcrum 
for  using  on  the  vast  populations  of  Northern  and 
Central  Africa  the  great  lever  of  religious  fanaticism. 
Formerly  the  Crescent  of  Islam  floated  on  all  the 
Kasbahs  of  the  Mediterranean  and  the  Red  Sea 
Then  Algeria  and  Tunisia  became  French.  Morocco 
became  practically  French,  Egypt  practically  Eng- 
lish. In  order  to  maintain  his  influence  over  the 
innumerable  Mohammedan  tribes  of  the  Dark  Con- 
tinent, there  remained  to  the  Grand  Turk  only  one 
solitary  port  of  entry,  Tripolitania.  And  whatever 
the  peoples  of  Europe  may  think,  the  Foreign  Ministers 
are  most  of  them  pleased  that  Turkey  has  lost  at  any 
rate  the  coast-line  of  Tripolitania.  Sir  Edward  Grey 
is  probably  as  pleased  as  Signor  Giolitti,  for  he  has 
been  told  by  his  permanent  officials  of  certain  under- 
hand tricks  which  Abd-ul-Hamid  was  accused  of 
having  played  in  Egypt  during  the  time  of  Arabi 
Pasha,  and  of  the  manner  in  which  during  the 
Sudanese  wars,  the  Mahdi  was  able  to  hypnotise 
millions  of  fanatics. 

In  Central  Africa  the  religion  of  Mohammed  has 
been  spreading  like  wildfire  during  the  last  few 
decades.  It  is  strongly  established  in  Central  Africa, 
from  the  Nile  to  the  Niger,  from  the  Atlas  to  the 


IS  TRIPOLI  WORTH  THE  TROUBLE  ?     43 

Congo.  And  on  all  these  newly-made  believers  the 
Sultan  of  Stamboul  has  impressed  the  fact  that  he 
is  also  the  Khalifa,  the  representative  of  the  Prophet, 
the  religious  chief  of  Islam.  Herein,  so  thought  the 
Foreign  Minister  of  more  than  one  Great  Power — 
herein  lay  an  element  of  danger  for  France,  England 
and  the  other  Powers  which  have  colonies  in  Africa. 
The  loss  of  Tripoli  by  the  Turks  would,  in  their 
opinion,  considerably  reduce  that  danger. 

But,  as  Marshal  von  der  Goltz  Pasha  pointed  out 
in  the  "Neue  Freie  Presse  "  of  March  10,  the  Sultan 
cannot  afford  to  abandon  Tripoli,  as  if  he  did  so,  he 
would  be  regarded  as  a  traitor  to  Islam  by  all  the 
Arabs.  And  the  diplomatists  of  France  and  England 
had  not  considered  the  effect  which  an  Italian  defeat 
in  Tripoli  would  have  on  their  Mohammedan  proteges^ 
not  only  in  the  adjoining  territories  but  all  over  the 
world. 


PART    II 
THE    BOMBARDMENT    AND    OCCUPATION 


CHAPTER    I 

THE  BOMBARDMENT 

On  October  3rd  the  Italian  fleet,  under  the  command 
of  Admiral  Faravelli,  began,  at  3.35  p.m.,  the  bom- 
bardment of  Tripoli.  The  bombardment  continued 
on  the  4th,  when  the  Sultanie  and  Hamidie  batteries 
were  destroyed,  and  at  midday  on  October  5th  the 
Italian  flag  was  hoisted  on  Fort  Sultanie,  the  Turkish 
troops  having  retired  into  the  interior. 

The  principal  ships  which  took  part  in  the  action 
were  the  Re  Umberto,  the  Sicilia,  the  Sardegna,  the 
Brin,  the  Emanuele  Filiberto  and  the  Carlo  Alberto. 
They  were  divided  into  two  groups,  two  divisions  of 
three  ships  each.  The  first  and  strongest  group  was 
composed  of  the  Re  Umberto,  the  Sardegna  and  the 
Sicilia.  On  the  first-mentioned  flew  the  flag  of 
Admiral  Borea-Ricci,  commander  of  the  division. 
The  second  group  was  composed  mostly  of  inferior 
vessels — the  Brin,  the  Ernanuele  Filiberto  and  the 
Carlo  Alberto.  On  the  Brin  was  Admiral  Faravelli, 
commander-in-chief  of  the  fleet  assembled  off  Tripoli. 

The  forts  which  these  vessels  were  supposed  to 
bombard  can  be  seen  by  a  glance  at  the  map.  On 
the  east  in  the  oasis  is  Fort  Hamidie.  On  the  west 
in  the  desert  is  Fort  Sultanie.  In  the  centre,  that 
is  in  the  city  itself,  there  is  a  battery  beside  the  light- 
house, another  on  the  mole,  and  also  one  on  the  north- 
west bastion.     The  Brin  division  was  to  destroy  the 

47 


48  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

central  fortifications.  The  Re  TJmberto  division  was 
to  destroy  the  Sultanie  battery.  The  Garibaldi  and 
the  Ferruccio  dismantled  the  Hamidie  battery. 

Now  as  for  the  strength  of  the  various  forts.  The 
mole  battery  had  two  Krupp  guns  of  240  millimetres 
and  five  cannon  of  320-400  millimetres  besides  thir- 
teen minor  cannon  and  five  howitzers.  The  north- 
west bastion  contained  one  Krupp  gun  of  150-170 
and  another  of  190-210  millimetres.  The  Light- 
house battery  had  one  Krupp  gun  of  210  and  two 
others  of  170.  The  Fort  Sultanie  had  five  Krupp 
guns  ranging  in  dimensions  from  150  to  240  milli- 
metres. 

The  central  forts  were  attacked  first  and  the  first 
shot  was  fired  at  the  red  fort  on  the  mole  at  exactly 
3.35  p.m.  It  was  fired  by  the  Brin  and  it  hit  the 
exterior  surface  of  the  fort,  but  injured  nobody.  The 
second  shot  was  also  fired  by  the  Brin.  When  a  third 
shot  was  fired  the  lighthouse  battery  answered  for 
the  first  time,  but  the  shot  did  not  reach  half-way 
to  the  ship  for  which  it  was  intended. 

This  bombardment — for  it  cannot  be  called  a  duel 
— was  carried  on  at  a  distance  of  only  three  or  four 
miles  and  was  the  tamest  affair  imaginable.  The 
Italians  were  so  close  that  they  could  hardly  have 
missed  if  they  had  tried.  Consequently  they  did  great 
damage,  knocking  down  the  lighthouse,  overturning 
the  guns,  and  converting  the  fort  into  a  heap  of  ruins. 
The  central  bastion  was  quite  blown  to  pieces,  the 
great  cupola  of  reinforced  concrete  which  protected 
the  240-millimetre  guns  had  disappeared.  The  lower 
portion  of  the  masonry  in  this  fort  had  been  painted 
red,  and  on  this  red  surface  there  now  showed  about 
half  a  dozen  huge  white  marks  caused  by  shells.  The 
Turkish  transport  Derna  was  sunk  by  the  Turks  them- 


LiGHTHorSK   SMASHED    ]5Y   SHELLS   OF    BATTLESHIPS. 
To  face  /.  4S.  Photo,  by  Author. 


THE    BOMBARDMENT  49 

selves,  who  opened  the  Kingston  valve.  A  wretched 
little  Turkish  gunboat  called  the  Hunter  of  the  Sea 
was  also  sunk  by  its  own  crew  after  they  had  removed 
the  one  or  two  antiquated  little  pop-guns  which  the 
vessel  carried.  A  number  of  little  sailing-vessels  in 
the  harbour  were  beaten  into  matchwood  by  a  hail- 
storm of  shells,  which  might  well,  one  would  think, 
have  been  saved  up  for  a  rainy  day. 

Until  the  mole  was  silenced  the  Carlo  Alberto  and 
the  Emanuele  Filiberto  made  no  remark,  as  they  had 
been  told  to  keep  out  of  range  of  a  certain  big  gun 
on  the  mole  which  was  supposed  to  be  capable  of 
reaching  them  under  favourable  circumstances.  When 
the  mole  ceased  to  reply  these  two  vessels  came  into 
action  and  rained  shells  on  the  north-west  bastion 
and  the  lighthouse  battery,  but  without  eliciting  any 
response. 

The  Re  Umberto  division  next  proceeded  to  pound 
Fort  Sultanie.  The  flagship  itself  opened  fire  at  a 
distance  of  four  miles  with  enormous  522-kilogramme 
shells.  It  was  followed  by  the  Sardegna  and  the 
Sicilia.  For  a  quarter  of  an  hour  the  fort  did  not 
reply.  When  it  did,  the  projectile  which  it  sent  in  the 
direction  of  the  Italians  did  not  reach  half-way  to 
them.  The  ships  fired  every  minute,  raining  shells  on 
the  forts  and  moving  at  a  speed  of  three  miles  an 
hour,  so  that  they  should  not  by  any  chance  be  hit. 
But  this  precaution  was  unnecessary.  The  fort  could 
not  reach  them,  though  it  replied  bravely  every  ten 
minutes  or  so  until,  after  being  pounded  out  of  shape 
for  half  an  hour,  it  ceased  to  fire.  For  another  half- 
hour  the  division  defiled  slowly  in  front  of  the  dis- 
mantled fort,  pouring  shells  into  it,  in  the  hope  of 
eliciting  some  sort  of  response.  The  ships  even  went 
to  within  three  thousand  yards  of  the  fort,  but  it 


50  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

failed  to  send  them  any  kind  of  greeting.  Neverthe- 
less it  was  not  until  six  o'clock  in  the  evening  that 
the  Re  Umberto  ceased  pounding  it.  Next  morning 
the  debris  of  this  fort  was  found  to  be  on  fire.  So 
ended  the  first  day's  work.  Not  a  single  Turkish  shot 
had  reached  its  destination.  There  had  been  very 
few  of  them  and  all  had  fallen  short. 

Next  day  the  Garibaldi,  the  Varese  and  the  Ferruc- 
cio  continued  the  dismantlement  of  Fort  Hamidie,  a 
work  which  they  had  begun  but  not  completed  the 
day  before.  An  enormous  number  of  expensive  shells 
were  poured  uselessly  and  needlessly  into  this  ruined 
and  abandoned  battery  during  the  space  of  half  an 
hour.  At  the  end  of  that  time  the  fort  had  ceased 
to  have  any  resemblance  to  an  artificial  work  and  was 
simply  a  heap  of  battered  sand  with,  here  and  there, 
a  pathetic  gun  sticking  up  out  of  the  wreck  as  if  it 
wanted  to  fire  at  an  aeroplane.  Then  the  Garibaldi 
sent  ashore  two  officers  and  two  men  to  destroy  the 
torpedo-station  and  any  guns  that  might  still  have 
remained  intact  in  the  fort. 

At  this  time  there  was  not  a  Turk  in  the  battery 
nor  ten  Turks  within  a  mile  of  it,  nevertheless  this 
sending  ashore  of  a  few  men  was  regarded  by  the 
Italians  as  one  of  the  greatest  naval  feats  that  had 
ever  been  performed,  as  on  a  par  with  Hobson's 
attempt  to  bottle  up  Admiral  Cervera's  squadron, 
or  the  Japanese  attempts  to  bottle  up  the  Russian 
ships  at  Port  Arthur.  One  writer  calls  it  "an  auda- 
cious coup,"  "  a  febbrile  work,"  "  an  intrepid  act," 
{intrepido  alto),  a  "  coup  de  main,''  and  assures  us 
that  it  was  carried  out  "  con  una  freddezza  ed  un 
coraggio  incredibili "  (with  incredible  coolness  and 
courage).  One  of  the  two  officers  entrusted  with 
this  tremendous  business  was  Captain  Verri,  who  had 


\- 


V 


THE    BOMBARDMENT  51 

been  living  in  Tripoli  before  the  bombardment  under 
an  assumed  name  and  pretending  to  be  an  Italian 
Postal  inspector.  Being  an  artillery  specialist,  he 
soon  rendered  the  guns  useless,  secured  the  sights, 
and  returned  safely  to  the  Garibaldi.  That  vessel 
and  the  torpedo-boat  Albatross  had,  all  the  time, 
been  sending  torrents  of  shell  over  his  head  so  as  to 
prevent  any  attack  being  made  on  him  by  the  Turks. 
One  of  those  shells  smashed  the  tomb  of  the  Kara- 
manli  family  close  by,  and  exposed  the  coffins  inside. 
Another  shell  destroyed  a  little  white  marabout 
among  the  palm-trees.  Verri  had  found  the  fort 
totally  wrecked.  Amid  the  ruins  lay  the  mutilated 
bodies  of  three  Turkish  soldiers.  As  we  shall  see 
later,  there  had  been  only  four  soldiers  in  the  fort 
during  the  bombardment.  Nesciat  Bey  had  sent 
them  there  to  die  and  three  of  them  had  died. 

The  Re  Umberto  division  steamed  down  to  Fort 
Sultanie  to  see  if  that  ruin  gave  any  signs  of  life.  Of 
course  it  gave  none,  though  the  flagship  approached 
as  near  as  the  depth  of  the  water  permitted — about 
a  thousand  yards.  It  was  still  on  fire,  and,  later  on, 
when  the  flames  reached  the  powder-magazine,  it 
blew  up. 

On  October  5th,  the  marines  landed.  First,  how- 
ever, two  "  expeditions,"  as  the  Italians  called  them, 
were  sent  out — one  to  the  half-submerged  Derna, 
another  to  the  Hamidie  battery  in  order  to  blow  it 
up.  The  latter  expedition  was  pretty  strong  and  it 
ran  no  danger  as  the  Turks  were  all  about  ten  miles 
off  by  this  time,  nevertheless  the  Italians  had  the 
usual  fit  of  hysterical  patriotism.  One  writer  who 
was  on  the  Varese  tells  us  that  he  and  his  companions 
could  not  take  their  eyes  off  the  fort.  "  Our  hearts 
were  with  our  brave  comrades."    The  blowing  up  of 


52  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

the  fort  was  accomplished  in  the  usual  way,  by 
means  of  an  electric  wire.  Unfortunately  the  landing- 
party  lost  their  bearings  in  the  cloud  of  smoke  raised 
by  the  explosion  and  the  whole  fleet  was  in  a  terrible 
state  of  excitement  about  them.  "  That  impene- 
trable smoke,"  says  one  author,  who  was  aboard  a 
ship  at  the  time,  "  that  impenetrable  smoke  seemed 
to  us — though  we  did  not  wish  to  confess  it — to  be 
the  winding-sheet  of  our  heroes." 

But  luckily  the  wind  blew  the  smoke  away,  where- 
upon "  un  grido  di  vittoria  "  (a  cry  of  victory)  rang 
across  the  intervening  sea.  "  Sono  salvi  tutti  "  (All 
are  safe).  When  this  little  band  of  desperate  men 
returned  to  their  vessel,  the  whole  crew  welcomed 
them  "  con  evviva  entusiastica.'' 

Throughout  the  following  narrative  the  reader  will 
notice,  again  and  again,  these  same  characteristics 
in  the  conduct  of  the  Italians.  In  playing  with  their 
army  and  fleet  they  are  like  children  playing  with  a 
new  toy.  They  are  enchanted,  ravished,  by  the 
simplest  effects  The  firing  of  a  ten-inch  gun  from  a 
ship,  four  miles  out,  at  a  deserted  fort  situated  on 
the  seashore  and  provided  with  guns  whose  range  is 
only  one  mile,  fills  them  with  ecstasy,  and  they  re- 
produce the  photograph  of  the  gunner  in  their  news- 
papers as  that  of  a  "  hero." 

Unfortunately  this  childish  sensibility  and  naivete 
are  sometimes,  as  we  shall  see  later,  accompanied  by 
an  amazing  carelessness  and  callousness  where  human 
life  is  concerned. 

At  4.30  in  the  afternoon  the  sailors  landed  in  two 
bodies,  one  party  at  Fort  Sultanie,  the  other  between 
Fort  Sultanie  and  the  city.  At  five  o'clock  the 
Italian  tricolour  was  hoisted  over  the  castle  of  the 
Vali  in  Tripoli  itself.     There  was  not  the  least  re- 


I.  "r  I 


tt 


'1 


THE    BOMBARDMENT  53 

sistance  any^vhere.  The  Italians  themselves  are  lost 
in  admiration  at  the  daring  and  seamanship  which 
they  displayed  in  this  attack  on  Tripoli. 

"  The  bombardment,"  cries  Signor  Bevione,  one 
of  their  leading  writers,  "  was  a  marvel  of  manoeu- 
vring and  of  shooting.  The  plan,  which  was 
elaborated  by  the  Admiral  and  which  results 
proved  to  be  the  best  possible  plan,  was  translated 
into  action  in  a  manner  that  could  not  have  been 
improved  upon.  The  three  divisions  manoeuvred 
and  fired  for  three  hours  before  the  forts,  while 
mathematically  preserving  their  formation  as  in  a 
naval  review.  The  accuracy  of  the  shooting  is 
already  famous.  .  .  .  This  record  is  enough  to 
convince  all  of  the  extraordinary  efficiency  of  our 
fleet." 

And  again  : 

"  This  is  a  day  which  all  should  bless  because  it 
proves  the  efficiency  of  the  fleet  to  defend  the 
rights  and  interests  of  the  country,  because  it 
opens  the  door  of  Tripolitania,  and  because  it  will 
remain  memorable  among  the  natives  as  a  proof 
of  our  strength  and  as  the  first  basis  of  our 
prestige." 

The  descriptions  of  the  bombardment  which  have 
appeared  in  the  Italian  Press  would  be  extravagant 
even  if  applied  to  Tsushima  or  to  the  terrible  naval 
attacks  of  the  Japanese  on  Port  Arthur.  The  corre- 
spondent of  the  "  Stampa,"  who  was  on  board  one  of 
the  battleships,  declared  that  "  the  entry  into  action 
of  the  Re  JJmherto  division  was  one  of  the  most  solemn 
spectacles  that  I  have  ever  seen." 

Now,  the  ludicrousness  of  all  this  will  be  manifest 


54  ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

when  I  remind  the  reader  of  the  following  interesting 
facts  : 

(1)  There  were  no  Turks  in  the  town.     They  had 

all  left. 

(2)  There   were   only   four   artillery-men   in   each 

battery,  and  their  duty  was  to  "  save  the 
face  "  of  the  departed  garrison  and  make  a 
sort  of  purely  formal  protest  by  firing  a  few 
shots. 

(3)  The  forts  were,  from  every  point  of  view,  use- 

less. A  single  vessel  could  have  shelled 
them  from  below  the  horizon.  The  Italian 
fleet  might  have  remained  invisible  while 
bombarding  the  wretched  place. 

Military  men  of  many  nations  have  seen  the  Tripoli 
forts,  and  all  of  them — all  of  them,  at  least,  who  were 
non-Italian — laughed  loud  and  long  at  the  sight. 
M.  de  Mathuisieulx,  a  French  officer,  says  of  them : 

"  I  do  not  know  what  idea  can  have  been  in  the 
head  of  the  military  engineer  who  established  his 
forts  in  a  place  so  open  to  the  sea  that  one  hostile 
cruiser  could  pulverize  them  without  being  him- 
self perceived." 

The  German  Lieutenant-General  von  dem  Borne, 
who  shows  the  greatest  care  not  to  offend  the  Italians, 
cannot,  nevertheless,  refrain  from  saying  ("  Der 
italienisch-tiirkische  Krieg")  that  the  forts  were, 
when  the  war  broke  out,  in  a  "  sehr  mangelhaften 
Zustande  "  (very  defective  condition). 

As  for  the  firing,  I  have  just  quoted  Signor  Bevione 
as  saying  that  it  is  already  world-famous. 

"  The  city,"  he  declares,  "  has  not  been  touched 


/ 


f . 


THE    BOMBARDMENT  55 

by  one  shrapnel  bullet.    The  shooting  of  our  ships 
has  been  of  a  miraculous  precision." 

Now,  a  naval  gunner  who  cannot  hit  a  fort  at  a 
distance  of  three  miles  is  not  much  good,  especially 
if  he  is  allowed  to  waste  hundreds  of  shells.  For  the 
Italians  did  waste  hundreds  of  shells — all  sorts  of 
shells  :    shrapnel,  armour-piercing,  and  percussion. 

And,  despite  what  Signor  Bevione  says,  many  of 
these  shells  flew  wide  of  the  mark  and  killed  innocent 
people  in  the  city.  One  shell  went  through  the  roof 
of  the  dragoman  to  the  German  Consulate,  and, 
narrowly  missing  the  Consul,  who  was  staying  in  the 
house  at  the  time,  killed  the  young  wife  and  two 
children  of  the  dragoman.  So  much  for  the  precisione 
miracolosa  of  the  shooting. 

It  would  be  more  correct  to  say  that  the  bad 
shooting  of  the  Italians  is  world-famous.  Mr.  E.  N. 
Bennett  tells  us  how  he  himself  saw  two  Italian  war- 
ships fire  sixty-three  shots  from  a  distance  of  2500 
yards  at  Bou-Kamesch,  an  old  fort  near  the  Tunisian 
border,  on  December  31st,  without  hitting  it  once, 
though  they  tried  hard  for  half  an  hour.  But,  of 
course,  the  usual  lie  was  wired  from  Tripoli.  It  was 
said  that  the  Turks  had  fled.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
they  had  been  all  the  time  seated  inside  the  fort 
laughing  at  Italian  marksmanship. 

What  a  world  of  difference  is  there  not  between 
this  inflated  nonsense  of  the  Italian  chroniclers  and 
the  hard,  brief,  soldierly  letters  of  Enver  Bey,  a 
selection  of  which  is  published  in  the  "  Lokal- 
Anzeiger "  for  January  28th.  This  brave  young 
man  tells  us  in  one  letter  how  he  travelled  for 
nine  hours  at  a  stretch  on  a  camel,  partly 
through   a   district   which   the   Italians    thought   to 


56  ITALY'S   WAR   FOR  A   DESERT 

be  favourable  to  them.  "  But  they  soon  greeted 
me,"  says  Enver  Bey,  "  as  the  son-in-law  of  the 
Khalifa.  They  accompanied  me,  and  told  me  how 
the}^  also  had  fought  against  the  Infidel.  They 
spoke  of  the  timid  soldiers  of  the  enemy,  and  I  could 
not  help  laughing  at  the  delusion  under  which  the 
Italians  laboured  that  they  had  these  people  on 
their  side.  If  I  had  money  I  could  do  much,  but  it  is 
my  boast  that  I  am  forming  an  army  without  having 
a  farthing  in  my  pocket."  And  he  succeeded  in 
forming  an  army,  for  in  a  subsequent  letter  he  says  : 
"  I  found  900  desert  warriors  when  I  came  here,  and 
now  I  have  under  me  16,000  trained  soldiers." 

He  is  amusing  when  he  tells  us  how  well  this  little 
army  managed  to  live  on  the  enemy.  On  one  occa- 
sion it  took  "  2  machine-guns,  250  rifles,  2  cannon, 
30,000  cartridges,  25  chests  of  shrapnel,  which  will 
be  useful  to  us,  and  10  mules  which  I  have  harnessed 
to  my  guns.  Among  the  dead  whom  the  enemy  was 
unable  to  remove  were  1  major,  1  captain,  5  lieu- 
tenants, and  200  men.  We  wanted  to  let  one  soldier 
whom  we  had  captured  run  away  again,  but  he 
seemed  to  be  very  pleased  at  having  been  captured, 
and  now  makes  himself  useful  by  cleaning  the  guns." 

Commenting  on  these  letters,  the  German  military 
critic  who  edited  them  for  the  press,  says  : 

"  Der  Mann,  der  das  schreibt,  der  dem  Gegner 
die  Waffen  nimmt,  mit  denen  er  ihn  schlagt,  mag 
den  titel  Major  oder  Pascha  fuhren,  aber  ist,  bei 
Allah,  von  Gottes  Gnaden — General  !  " 

(The  man  who  writes  this,  who  captures  weapons 
from  the  enemy  and  then  fights  him  with  those 
weapons,  may  bear  the  title  of  Major  or  Pasha,  but 
he  is,  by  Allah,  by  God's  grace — General !) 


CHAPTER    II 
IN   TRIPOLI   TOWN 

Tripoli,  October  7th. 

The  panic  among  the  Europeans  in  Tripoli  on 
the  occasion  of  the  bombardment  was  not  such 
as  to  raise  them  very  much  in  the  estimation  of 
the  Turks.  The  proprietor  of  the  local  "  Waldorf 
Astoria  "  was  among  the  first  who  ran.  His  name 
is  Julius  Caesar  Aquilina.  He  is  a  Maltese,  de- 
scended on  one  side  (so  he  admits)  from  Julius 
Csesar,  and  on  the  other  from  the  Knights  of 
Malta.  He  and  all  his  numerous  sons  style  them- 
selves Chevalier,  and  are,  like  all  the  Maltese,  more 
Italian  than  the  Italians  themselves.  Before  the 
bombardment  the  whole  family  left  after  having 
hastily  entrusted  the  keys  of  the  hotel  to  the  forty 
Italian  journalists  who  had  elected  to  remain  there 
(but  who  had  reckoned  without  the  Turks,  who  soon 
moved  them  on).  I  returned  with  one  of  the  family, 
a  son  who  had  been  living  in  Sfax,  Tunisia,  and 
who  was  the  first  of  the  House  of  Aquilina  to  put  in 
an  appearance  on  the  scene.  He  found  his  hotel  in 
possession  of  a  number  of  people  who  were  paying  no 
rent.  The  key  of  the  door  had  been  lost,  and  the 
house  was  open  day  and  night.  Weary  Willies  who 
wanted  rooms,  strolled  in  and  selected  a  suite,  after 
helping    themselves    to    the    choicest    wines    in    the 

57 


58  ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

cellars.  There  was  no  way  of  getting  them  out,  for 
they  were  all  armed  to  the  teeth  ;  and  there  was  no 
way  of  "  getting  the  law  on  them,"  for  there  was  no 
law.  Turkish  rule  had  ceased,  Italian  civil  rule  had 
not  yet  been  inaugurated,  and  the  military  authorities 
were  too  much  afraid  of  being  evicted  themselves 
to  bother  about  "  moving  on  "  impecunious  lodgers 
who  would  not  pay. 

Consequently,  Tripoli  of  Barbary  became  for  the 
moment  an  ideal  happy  hunting-ground  for  sharks, 
unemployables.  Tired  Tims,  and  tramps  of  every 
possible  variety.  The  great  heart  of  Italy  was  moved 
by  the  news,  and  there  was  such  an  agitation  in  the 
Italian  workhouses  that  the  Government  had  to 
issue  a  notice  stating  that  it  would  issue  no  passports 
to  Tripoli  until  that  country  was  settled.  It  also 
refused  to  let  any  Italians  come  to  the  new  colony 
unless  they  proved  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  military 
authorities  that  they  had  great  and  important  in- 
terests there.  This  order  saved  us  from  a  deluge  of 
"  hobos,"  but  the  inundation  has  only  been  tempor- 
arily stayed.  The  place  is  bound  to  be  flooded  very 
soon  with  ex-bandits,  Camorri,  Carbonari,  and  officials 
of  the  Black  Hand.  Then  we  shall  be  told  that  Italy 
is  introducing  civilisation  into  the  Dark  Continent. 
Already  she  has  introduced  one  barrel-organ  which 
for  stridency  of  tone  and  complete  absence  of  harmony 
beats  any  hurdy-gurdy  which  I  ever  heard  on  the 
boulevards  of  Little  Italy,  New  York.  It  is  a  money- 
making  concern  this  barrel-organ,  for  there  is  nobody 
here  so  callous  to  the  charms  of  music  that  his  hand 
does  not,  as  soon  as  he  hears  it,  dive  into  his  pockets 
to  get  either  a  revolver  or  a  coin  with  which  to  make 
the  organ-grinder  get  out  of  ear-shot. 

For  some  days  Chevalier  Aquilina,  junior,  tried  to 


IN    TRIPOLI    TOWN  59 

evolve  order  out  of  chaos.  He  developed  photographs, 
blacked  boots,  cooked,  made  the  beds,  acted  as 
waiter,  porter,  and  in  half  a  dozen  other  capacities. 
Then  his  parents  and  half  a  dozen  of  his  brothers  and 
sisters  came,  and  the  situation  was  saved.  At 
least,  it  was  possible  to  get  a  hard-boiled  egg  now 
and  then.  If  ever  this  meets  the  eye  of  the  Chevalier 
Aquilina,  I  trust  he  will  not  think  that  I  am  trying  to 
be  sarcastic  at  his  expense.  The  old  man  had  every 
right  to  bolt.  He  was  not  in  business  in  order  that 
an  Italian  shell  should  drop  on  top  of  him.  And  I 
admire  the  way  in  which  he  manages  to  run  his 
little  hotel,  despite  the  fact  that  it  contains  ten 
times  more  guests  than  it  was  ever  intended  to 
accommodate,  and  that  it  is  difficult  to  buy  a  piece 
of  meat  anywhere  in  town,  and  impossible  to  obtain 
such  necessaries  of  life  as  cigarettes,  wine,  and  mineral 
water.  I  wish  him  every  success  under  Italian 
auspices.  Indifferent  as  his  hostel  is,  he  has  got  the 
start  by  a  long  way,  and  is  pretty  sure  to  keep  it. 

The  leading  nations  are  represented  by  good  Con- 
suls in  Tripoli,  but  some  of  the  smaller  nations  have 
got  local  men,  principally  Maltese,  who  seem  to  work 
not  for  money,  but  for  glory.  Some  of  these  were 
in  a  state  of  collapse  when  the  Italian  ultimatum 
was  issued.  The  bombardment,  it  will  be  remembered, 
began  on  October  3rd.  The  day  before,  the  Spanish 
Vice-Consul  was  seized  with  the  delusion  that  there 
was  going  to  be  a  general  massacre  of  Europeans 
that  night. 

Half-crazy  with  excitement,  he  summoned  a  meet- 
ing of  his  colleagues.  It  was  a  strange  gathering. 
One  Consul  is  described  to  me  as  staggering  as  if  he 
were  drunk  and  loudly  asserting  that  he  was  "  a 
moral  wreck."     There  was  no  necessitv  for  him  to 


60  ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

insist  on  the  point.  It  was  perfectly  clear  to  every- 
body who  took  the  trouble  to  look  at  him. 

The  meeting  had  before  it  a  communication  from 
the  Italian  Admiral  announcing  that  there  would  be 
a  bombardment  in  twenty-four  hours,  and  inviting 
everybody  to  take  refuge  on  board  the  battleships. 
This  order  was  one  of  the  many  wild  things  which 
the  Italians  have  done  since  this  Tripoli  affair  began. 
How  would  it  be  possible  for  the  consuls  to  get 
several  thousand  foreigners  on  board  the  vessels  of 
the  fleet  inside  such  a  short  space  of  time  ?  Many 
of  them  were  ill,  many  of  them  were  women  reduced 
to  an  hysterical  condition  through  fright,  many  of 
them  were  children.  It  would  need  days  to  get  all 
these  people  out  of  the  town,  and  there  were  only  a 
few  Arab  boats  in  which  to  take  them.  The  Arab 
boatmen  refused  to  help,  and  the  Italian  sailors 
stood  serenely  aloof.  They  had  created  chaos  in 
the  port,  and  they  took  no  steps  to  save  even  their 
own  countrymen  from  it.  They  denounced  Turkish 
barbarism,  but  they  calmly  left  thousands  of  Euro- 
pean women  and  children  to  the  mercy  of  the  "  bar- 
barians." Events  showed  that  they  had  sufficient 
transports  to  carry  off  the  whole  population,  but 
those  transports  were  in  Italy  being  filled  up  with 
troops.  The  Italian  Government  should  at  least 
have  chartered  vessels  for  the  conveyance  of  the 
refugees,  but  it  did  not  like  to  spend  the  money. 
The  Admiral  simply  confined  himself  to  warning  the 
Europeans  that  he  would  bombard  the  town  next  day. 
He  seems  to  have  fancied  that  there  his  duty  ended. 

To  unspeakable  Stamboul  the  Consuls — or  such 
of  them  as  remained  sane — then  proceeded  to  pay  a 
very  remarkable  tribute.  In  a  reply  to  the  Admiral 
they  refused  to  leave  the  town,  and  asserted  that 


IN    TRIPOLI    TOWN  61 

they  relied  with  confidence  on  the  protection  of  the 
Turkish  authorities.  They  felt  sure  that  the  Ottoman 
police  would  keep  order.  And  as  a  matter  of  fact 
the  Ottoman  police  did  keep  perfect  order.  They 
even  remained  behind  in  order  that  the  Europeans 
should  not  be  molested  during  the  interregnum. 
Thus  the  Turks  voluntarily  deprived  themselves  of 
a  valuable  section  of  their  military  force.  They  did 
this  for  the  sake  of  the  Christians  just  at  the  moment 
when  Italian  shells  were  crashing  through  roofs  and 
killing  innocent  women  and  children. 

It  was  Mr.  Wood,  the  American  Consul,  who  drew 
up  the  reply  to  the  Admiral,  saying  that  the  consuls 
and  their  nationals  had  sufficient  confidence  in  the 
Turkish  authorities,  and  would  therefore  remain. 
This  document  was  dashed  off  by  Mr.  Wood  in 
English.  The  French  Vice-Consul  translated  it  into 
French,  and  everybody  signed.  It  was  a  wise  docu- 
ment, for  had  the  Consuls  fled  the  Turks  and  Arabs 
would  have  felt  themselves  abandoned  by  Christi- 
anity. The  natives  would  have  looked  on  the  war 
as  one  between  Christianity  and  Islam,  and  con- 
sequently they  could  hardly  have  been  prevented 
from  butchering,  in  their  desperation,  such  of  the 
poorer  Christians  as  had  not  succeeded  in  getting 
away.  The  authoritative  consular  declaration  made 
it  clear  to  all,  however,  that  the  war  was  only  between 
Italy  and  Turkey,  not  between  the  followers  of  Christ 
and  the  followers  of  Mohammed. 

After  this  document  was  signed  some  of  the  consuls 
made  their  last  call  on  the  Turkish  officials.  One  of 
them,  the  American  Consul,  afterwards  described  to 
me  what  happened.  He  directed  his  steps  towards 
the  military  head-quarters,  and  found  there  Colonel 
Nesciat  Bey,  who  commands  the  troops.   The  Colonel 


62  ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

is  a  powerfully-built,  medium-sized  man,  in  the 
prime  of  life,  that  is,  between  forty-two  and  forty- 
five  years  of  age.  He  wears  a  black  moustache,  but 
is  otherwise  clean-shaven.  He  is  a  man  of  jovial 
disposition  and  very  fond  of  children.  On  the  present 
occasion  he  looked  depressed.  With  him  was 
General  Munir  Pasha. 

The  Defterdar,  or  Financial  Agent,  was  present 
too.  So  was  the  Political  Agent,  a  very  well- 
dressed  young  Turkish  diplomatist  of  the  most 
polished  Parisian  school.  All  were  silent,  depressed, 
but  very  busy  signing  papers  and  issuing  orders. 
The  Political  Agent,  whose  business  it  was  to  do  with 
the  foreign  consuls  and  keep  them  in  good  humour, 
spoke  first  to  the  visitor,  who  expressed  his  sorrow 
at  what  had  occurred  and  his  hope  that  the  difficulty 
would  end  in  a  manner  satisfactory  to  all  parties. 
The  Political  Agent  complained  bitterly  of  the 
Italian  raid.  Such  a  thing,  he  said,  might  have  been 
all  right  five  hundred  years  ago.  In  this,  the  twen- 
tieth century,  it  was  certainly  a  surprising  relic  of 
primitive  barbarism.  It  was  curious  thus  to  hear 
a  Turk  denouncing  with  crushing  logic  and  in  irre- 
proachable French  the  piratical  Christian  nation 
wherein  the  Pope  is  a  guest. 

Finally,  the  Consul  took  his  leave.  He  pressed 
the  hand  of  the  Political  Agent.  He  pressed  in 
silence  the  hand  of  Colonel  Nesciat  Bey  and  of  the 
other  functionaries  and  officers.  Then  he  passed 
hastily  out.  Mr.  Wood  is  a  Christian,  of  course,  but 
he  admits  that  he  could  hardly  repress  tears  as  he 
took  leave  of  these  brave  men,  victims  of  a  cruel 
and  unjustifiable  aggression,  placed  by  circumstances 
in  as  unpleasant  a  position  as  men  can  find  them- 
selves in. 


IN    TRIPOLI    TOWN  63 

Next  morning  this  same  Consul  walked  through 
the  town  without  being  molested  by  anybody.  He 
called  again  on  some  Turkish  friends  at  ten  o'clock 
in  the  morning.  The  bombardment  began  only  six 
hours  later,  but  there  was  no  extraordinary  excite- 
ment, and  the  Turkish  officers  whom  he  met  saluted 
him  punctiliously.  They  were  worried,  however, 
about  the  fate  of  their  wives  and  daughters,  whom 
they  were  forced  to  leave  behind  while  they  them- 
selves retired  into  the  desert.  We  are  accustomed 
to  think  it  an  awful  thing  for  Christian  women  to  be 
left  to  the  mercy  of  the  Turk.  On  the  present  oc- 
casion there  were  hundreds  of  Christian  women  at 
his  mercy,  and  not  one  of  them  was  molested.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  Turk  knows  from  experience 
stretching  back  to  the  time  of  the  Crusades  that  it  is 
not  quite  safe  to  leave  the  women  of  his  harem  to  the 
tender  mercies  of  the  Christian. 

But  when  Nesciat  Bey  left  Tripoli  a  great  many 
Turkish  ladies,  wives  of  officers  and  functionaries, 
had  thus  to  be  abandoned. 

From  a  military  and  an  imperial  point  of  view 
Turkey  has  lost  by  this  Tripoli  raid,  but  from  a 
moral  point  of  view  she  has  gained.  For  the  first 
time  in  history  Christian  women  and  children  have 
been  entrusted  by  European  consuls  to  the  keeping 
of  her  soldiers,  and  she  has  justified  the  trust  reposed 
in  her.  From  the  beginning  of  these  Tripoli  negotia- 
tions Turkey's  attitude  has  been  remarkably  correct 
and  creditable.  There  have  been  no  massacres. 
There  has  been  no  inhumanity.  On  the  contrary, 
there  have  been  mercy,  forethought,  restraint.  The 
loss  of  Tripoli  has  been  a  dreadful  experience  to  the 
Ottoman  Empire,  but  it  has  proved  that  Turkey  has 
at  length  become  civilised.     There  are  Italian  mis- 


64  ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

sionaries  scattered  all  over  the  Ottoman  Empire, 
and  in  some  cases  these  missionaries  celebrated  the 
attack  on  Tripoli  with  rejoicings.  Ten  years  ago 
the  Turks  would  have  massacred  them  all.  On  the 
present  occasion  they  confined  themselves  to  lodging 
with  the  Papal  Nuncio  in  Constantinople  a  most  polite 
complaint  written  in  the  best  French.  That  com- 
plaint was  at  once  transmitted  to  the  Pope,  who 
immediately  replied  to  it. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   RETURN   OF   THE    ROMANS  ^ 

Hotel  Minerva,  Tripoli, 

October  13th. 

At  Tripoli  of  Barbary  the  sua  is  going  down, 
The  shadows  of  a  southern  eve  are  falling  on  the  town, 
The  voice  of  the  muezzin  sounds  from  the  minaret, 
Tlie  Faithful  bend,  below,  in  prayer  :  "  Allah  !  be  with  us  yet !  " 
The  turban'd  Berbers  scowl  upon  the  strangers  in  the  forts. 
And  women's  prayers  unceasingly  rise  from  the  lattic'd  courts. 
But  vain  the  curses,  prayers  and  tears,  the  angry  looks  and  black. 
In  thunder  speak  yon  battleships  I    "  The  Romans   have  come 
back  ! " 

You  marvelled  at  their  cities  a-buried  in  your  sands, 

You  laughed  at  men  who  said  those  works  were  built  by  human 

hands ; 
Across  your  deserts,  by  the  sea,  still  runs  the  Roman  way, — 
The  sons  of  those  who  made  it  are  in  your  streets  to-day  ! 
Before  them,  slowly  back  into  the  darkness  whence  they  came, 
The  Osmanli  ride  sullenly,  never  to  come  again. 
There's  wailing  on  the  Bosphorus,  there's  grief  in  Arabie, 
For  Christian  dogs  have  landed  on  the  coast  of  Barbaric. 

Aye,  truly  have  they  landed.     Rome  has  come  back  again. 
Inland  from  the  Spanish  fort  march  twenty  thousand  men, 

^  This  and  the  four  following  chapters  appeared  originally  in  the 
"  Westminster  Gazette."  I  reprint  them  here  in  order  to  show  that 
instead  of  coming  to  Tripoli  prejudiced  against  the  Italians,  I  was 
actually  prejudiced  in  their  favour.  I  did  not  then  know  that  this 
"  proud  appellation"  of  "  Roman  "  which  Gibbon  regarded  as  having 
been  "  profaned -by  the  successors  of  Constantine"  is  still  more  pro- 
faned by  the  present  Brummagem  Kingdom  which  pretends  to  carry 
on  the  tradition  of  the  Can sars. 

F  65 


66  ITALY'S   WAR   FOR  A   DESERT 

Horse,  foot,  and  artillery.     Hark  to  the  songs  they  sing  ! 
Libya  wakes  at  the  beating  of  the  Roman  Eagle's  wing. 
Memorials  of  dead  Csesars  emit  mysterious  light, 
Mars  with  a  blood-red  radiance  hangs  in  the  sky  at  night, 
f'allen  Corinthian  columns  gleam  in  the  sands  like  snow, 
White  limbs  of  broken  statues  glow  with  a  mystic  glow. 
Columns  of  great  proconsuls,  graves  of  the  Roman  dead. 
Echo,  after  a  thousand  years,  a  Roman  legion's  tread. 
Tombs  of  the  old  Centurions  'mid  the  oasis  grass 
Ring  with  hollow  murmur  as  the  Roman  banners  pass. 
Far  down  the  coast  at  Leptis,  fishermen  'mid  the  foam 
Whisper  again  to  each  other  the  mighty  name  of  Rome. 

I  WAS  drinking  coffee  in  a  little  Turkish  military 
club  on  the  sea-front  when  the  great  news  came. 
The  garden  of  this  club  is  filled  with  magnificent 
Roman  statues  dug  up  in  various  parts  of  Tripoli- 
tania,  but  all  of  them  had,  of  course,  been  beheaded 
owing  to  Moslem  prejudices  on  the  subject  of  graven 
images.  I  was  watching  these  statues  closely.  At 
the  back  of  my  mind  was  a  sort  of  odd,  superstitious 
expectation  that  they  would  raise  their  mutilated 
arms  or  make  some  other  sign.  Surely  these  marble 
captives  will  welcome  their  countrymen  back  ! 

For  a  thousand  years  and  more  the  Romans  were 
here.  The  Doric  and  Corinthian  columns  of  their 
jora  and  of  their  villas,  the  splendid,  square-cut 
stones  of  their  temples,  have  furnished  the  parasitical 
Turk  and  Arab  with  plenty  of  material  for  their 
mosques,  their  citadels,  their  forts,  even  for  their 
huts.  I  have  seen  splendid  Roman  capitals  built 
into  the  corners  of  the  most  wretched  lanes  in  Tripoli. 
You  can  hardly  walk  a  hundred  yards  in  any  direction 
without  finding  a  Roman  column  lying  on  the  ground 
for  Arabs  to  sit  upon.  Sometimes  they  are  planted 
upright  so  as  to  enable  camels  to  scratch  themselves. 
Near  the  French  Consulate  is  a  magnificent  arch  of 
triumph,  half  buried  in  the  ground  and  shockingly 


THE  RETURN  OF  THE  ROMANS   67 

mutilated.  Out  of  the  four  arcades  of  this  edifice, 
three  have  been  walled  over.  The  interior  has  been 
converted  into  a  tenth-rate  cinematograph  show, 
which  has  been  for  months  past  in  a  state  of  bank- 
ruptcy and  suspended  animation.  Lemaire,  who 
saw  this  arch  in  the  time  of  Louis  XIV,  describes  it 
as  covered  with  medallions  of  Roman  consuls,  and 
ornamented  in  high  relief  with  an  Alexander,  two 
Sphinxes  and  troops  of  slaves.  All  these  artistic 
treasures  have  now  disappeared. 

Nevertheless,  impressive  even  in  its  degradation, 
this  old  arch  of  Marcus  Aurelius  towers  above  the 
Arab  hovels  around  it  as  blind  Samson  towered  over 
the  Philistines.  It  would  be  difficult  even  at  Rome 
to  find  a  triumphal  arch  composed  of  such  gigantic 
blocks  of  marble,  which  are  all  the  more  striking 
because  there  exists  in  this  country  no  quarry  from 
which  this  stone  could  have  been  taken.  Another 
very  surprising  thing  about  this  arch  is  the  fact  that 
the  stones  are  not  bound  together  by  any  cement. 
Invisible  bands  of  iron  have  for  over  eighteen  hundred 
years  kept  this  edifice  intact.  Inside,  the  spherical 
ceiling  is  bordered  with  delightful  reliefs. 

For  over  a  thousand  years  Tripoli  was  the  principal 
grain  emporium  of  Rome.  Magnificent  roads,  shaded 
all  the  way  with  trees,  ran  along  the  coast  from  city 
to  city.  Far  beneath  the  waves  at  Lebda  or  Leptis, 
one  can  still  see  the  broken  private  jetties  opposite 
what  once  were  the  villas  of  Roman  proconsuls. 
Just  peeping  above  the  sand  in  Leptis,  Sabratha,  and 
other  places  are  parts  of  invaluable  inscriptions 
which  the  Turks  insolently  refused  to  let  any  dog  of 
an  Unbeliever  uncover,  to  the  extent  even  of  a 
finger' s-breadth  of  sand,  so  that  he  could  read  the 
whole  inscription.    And  meanwhile  the  archaeologist 


68  ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

was  maddened  by  the  sight  of  Arabs  freely  carting 
away  from  the  ruins  masses  of  marble  which  they 
wanted  to  convert  into  lime  or  building  material  ! 
An  exception  was  recently  made  in  favour  of  an 
American  mission  working  in  Cyrenaica,  but  only  on 
condition  that  any  art  treasures  discovered  must  be 
handed  over  to  the  gentle  keeping  of  the  Turk.  This 
meant,  of  course,  that,  moved  by  religious  considera- 
tions, some  Mohammedan  fanatic  was  certain,  sooner 
or  later,  to  smash  the  nose  of  a  beautiful  Venus,  or 
Diana,  or  Apollo.  History  and  art  have  probably 
sustained  irreparable  losses  during  the  reign  of  the 
Turk  in  Tripoli.  What  a  pity  that,  in  their  ultimatum, 
the  Roman  Government  did  not  insist  on  the  im- 
possibility of  civilisation  allowing  such  iconoclasts  as 
the  Osmanli  to  remain  any  longer  in  possession  of 
a  land  so  rich  in  buried  historical  treasures  as  is 
Tripolitania  !  A  long  list  of  Turkish  outrages  on 
beautiful  statues  could  have  been  added  (I  could 
have  given  some  myself),  and  where,  then,  is  the 
heart  that  would  not  have  gone  out  to  Italy  in  her 
new  crusade  ? 


CHAPTER    IV 

THE   LANDING   OF  THE   BERSAGLIERI 

Hotel  Minerva,   Tripoli, 

October  13th. 

I  HURRY  from  the  Turkish  Club  to  see  the  Romans 
land.  It  is  an  historic  sight.  There  are  twenty 
Transatlantic  and  other  Italian  liners  lying  off  the 
land,  besides  half  a  dozen  men-o'-war  and  a  number 
of  torpedo-boats.  This  harbour,  three  weeks  ago  the 
most  deserted  of  the  great  African  ports,  is  now  the 
busiest.  The  appearance  in  the  roadstead  of  more 
than  three  or  four  steamers  at  a  time  was  sufficient  to 
excite  astonishment.  Now  the  horizon  is  hardly 
visible  for  the  long  line  of  shipping.  Some  of  the 
Transatlantic  liners  bulk  up  as  large  almost  as 
Cunarders.  The  sea  is  alive  with  small  craft  of  all 
descriptions — pinnaces,  gigs,  motor  launches,  two 
Press  steamers  (one  English,  one  American),  row- 
boats,  sailing-vessels.  There  are  some  dozens  of 
picturesque  fruit-vessels  from  Sicily.  And  through 
the  midst  of  these  smaller  craft  come,  like  huge  sea- 
serpents,  strings  of  boats  crammed  with  soldiers  and 
drawn  along  by  powerful  destroyers.  Long,  slender, 
sharp-nosed  torpedo-boats,  greyhounds  of  the  sea, 
cut  the  water  in  all  directions.  The  slate-coloured 
vessels  of  war,  with  their  hard,  fierce  outline,  are  in 
strong  contrast  to  the  gay  Sicilian  sailing-ships  and 
to  the  liners  with  their  promenade  decks,  their  light- 

69 


ro  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

coloured  funnels,  and  their  general  appeal  to  the 
comfort-loving  tourist. 

In  the  foreground,  close  in  to  the  shore,  lies  the 
unhappy  Derna,  the  steamer  which  brought  the  last 
consignment  of  ammunition  to  the  Turks.  It  was 
sunk  by  the  Turks  themselves,  and  though  it  has  a 
big  list  to  starboard,  it  will  soon,  I  am  sure,  be  afloat 
again.  Shattered  also  by  a  shell  is  the  ludicrous 
little  Turkish  gunboat  which  bore  the  high-sounding 
name  of  Hunter  of  the  Sea,  and  which  now  lies  near 
the  Custom-house  pier,  wrecked,  rusty,  half-full  of 
water,  despoiled  of  its  guns  and  of  everything  port- 
able. The  masts  of  several  other  vessels  are  sticking 
up  above  the  surface  of  the  water,  inside  the  reefs. 
They  are  evidently  small  sailing-vessels,  and  it  is 
difficult  to  see  why  they  should  have  all  been  sunk. 

At  night  the  illumination  at  sea  makes  the  harbour 
look  like  Southampton  as  seen  from  the  deck  of  an 
incoming  South  American,  with  this  difference,  how- 
ever, that  while  in  Southampton  most  of  the  lights 
are  on  land,  in  Tripoli  they  are  nearly  all  on  the  sea. 
The  oil-lamp  and  tallow-candle  illumination  ashore  is 
nothing  in  comparison  with  the  blaze  of  electricity 
and  incandescent  light  on  the  water.  The  great  liners 
are  a  dazzling  mass  of  brilliancies.  Light  pours  in 
floods  from  every  port-hole,  and  is  reflected  upwards, 
brokenly,  from  the  rolling,  uneasy  waves.  The 
search-lights  of  the  battleships  swing  backwards  and 
forwards  like  the  long,  grey,  luminous  tentacles  of 
monstrous  sea-serpents.  They  brighten  up  the 
Sicilian  schooners  until  they  look  like  a  fairy  fleet  in 
a  Drury  Lane  pantomime.  One  battleship  keeps  its 
search-light  fixed  permanently,  like  a  gigantic  eye, 
on  a  dangerous  point  on  the  desert  coast.  Beneath 
its  brilliant  rays  the  white  sand  shines  as  at  midday. 


'  % 


u.  ■■'■• 

y.  '^ 


I  1^ 


LANDING  OF  THE  BERSAGLIERI        71 

But  no  dark  figure  crosses  that  luminous  belt  of  sea- 
sand.  It  is  apparently  as  uninhabited  as  a  lunar 
mountain.  The  Re  Umberto  is  signalling  with  flash- 
lights :  "  dot — dash — dot — dot — dot — dash  (pause) 
— dash — dash — dash — dash — dot."  Another  war- 
ship is  signalling  by  means  of  twinkling  lights  at  the 
mast-heads.  The  sea-front  is  crowded  until  a  late 
hour  every  night  with  petrified  Arabs  from  the 
Desert.  They  gaze,  thunder  -  stricken,  while  some 
invisible,  gigantic  hand  writes  with  lightning  rapidity 
those  characters  of  fire  on  the  vast,  sombre  wall  of 
night,  hastily  blots  them  out,  and  as  hastily  re-writes 
them.  "  Allah  !  the  Merciful,  the  Compassionate, 
what  black  magic  is  this  ?  Does  Satan  in  person 
hover  over  the  dark  thunder-fleet  of  his  worshippers  ? 
Has  Hell  finally  triumphed  over  the  People  of  God  ? 
No  !  No  !  No  !  There  is  no  God  but  God,  and 
Mohammed  is  the  Prophet  of  God  !  " 

But  I  am  anticipating.  It  is  still  daylight  and  the 
Bersaglieri  are  landing.  Few  of  them  are  the  dark, 
swarthy-faced  people  whom  we  are  accustomed  to 
regard,  in  England,  as  typical  Italians.  The  majority 
are  fair,  square-built,  healthy-looking  young  men. 
They  come  from  Florence  and  Siena,  and  were  never 
before,  in  most  cases,  outside  their  native  village.  The 
surprise  in  their  wide-open  eyes  is  the  surprise  of  the 
Cockney  schoolboy  who  has  been  suddenly  caught 
up  in  Hyde  Park  by  an  aeroplane  and  landed  in 
Timbuctoo.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  the  mosques,  the 
Arab  dresses,  and  the  camels  fill  them  with  unspeak- 
able astonishment.  And  their  officers,  up  to  the 
very  War  Office  itself,  are  as  ignorant  of  local  condi- 
tions as  they  are.  Cholera  is  raging  in  the  town, 
nevertheless   the   officers   eat   over-ripe   melons   and 


72  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

drink  water  from  the  street  fountains.  Both  officers 
and  men  "fill  up  "  on  beer,  a  fatal  drink  in  a  hot 
climate — especially  when  the  beer  is  bad.  Nobody 
seems  to  have  ever  heard  of  such  a  thing  as  a  cholera- 
belt.  The  water-bottle  of  the  French  soldier  in 
Algiers  always  holds  two  litres.  The  water-bottle  of 
the  Italian  soldier  here  does  not  hold  half  a  litre. 
But  the  supreme,  the  crowning,  the  inexplicable 
blunder,  is  the  dress  of  the  officers  and  men.  It  is  a 
thick,  grey,  heavy  material,  quite  hot  enough  for 
St.  Petersburg  at  this  time  of  year,  but  absurdly, 
criminally,  out  of  place  here.  It  closely  resembles 
the  stuff  used  in  Ulster  for  making  heavy  overcoats. 
Out  at  the  front  I  have  seen  whole  regiments  digging 
trenches  in  the  blazing  sand.  They  still  wore  these 
clothes  (the  very  sight  of  which  made  me  perspire), 
and  they  had  not  evidently  received  permission  to 
take  off  their  coats.  It  was  not  in  such  a  uniform 
that  the  old  Romans  conquered  this  country.  In- 
deed, the  present  Arab  dress  is  supposed  to  have 
been  adapted  from  that  of  the  Romans. 

Up  the  main  street,  along  the  sea-front,  march  the 
Bersaglieri,  their  plumes  dancing  in  the  wind,  their 
bands  playing  the  Italian  anthem,  their  regimental 
flags  fluttering  in  the  breeze.  I  watch  them  as  they 
swing  out  of  the  Custom-house.  Close  by  is  a  little 
mosque  with  a  verse  from  the  Koran  engraven  on  a 
slab  of  marble  over  the  door.  Inside,  an  intense 
silence,  a  religious  hush  which  contrasts  vividly  with 
the  shouting  of  the  captains  outside,  with  the  regular 
tramp,  tramp,  tramp  of  the  heavily-laden  marching 
men,  with  the  shrill,  ear-splitting,  nerve-racking 
clamour  of  some  Italian  civilians  talking  all  at  the 
same  time  and  all  at  the  top  of  their  voices  about 
nothing  in  particular. 


LANDING  OF  THE  BERSAGLIERI         73 

The  only  worshipper  in  the  temple  is  (with  the 
possible  exception  of  a  dove  perched  inside  the  open 
window)  an  old,  grey-bearded  Arab.  His  motion- 
lessness  and  his  long,  voluminous,  snow-white 
draperies  give  him  the  air  of  a  Roman  statue.  He  is 
facing  towards  Mecca,  and  his  set  face  is  that  of  a 
man  in  an  ecstasy.  His  lips  move,  but  no  sound  is 
heard.  When  he  kneels,  prostrates  himself,  and 
touches  the  matted  floor  with  his  forehead,  his  move- 
ments are  replete  with  calm,  dignity,  devotion — even 
with  majesty.  He  looks  like  a  Roman  senator  on 
the  Capitol  when  the  Gauls  had  taken  the  city  and 
all  was  lost.  Strangely  enough,  he  reminds  me  more 
of  Rome  than  do  the  Romans  themselves  outside. 
A  Biblical  Patriarch  who  had  walked  with  God 
could  not  have  worshipped  with  more  solemnity  and 
impressiveness.  There  is  an  unconscious  grace  and 
harmony  in  every  movement. 

For  what  is  this  benignant  old  man  praying  so 
fervently  to  Allah  ?  Most  probably  for  famine, 
pestilence,  and  universal  war,  for  red  ruin  and  the 
breaking-up  of  laws.  Mild-looking  and  feeble  as  is 
this  ancient,  he  represents  the  greatest  danger 
against  which  the  Italians  have  to  guard.  He  is  the 
incarnation  of  Moslem  fanaticism,  the  most  warlike 
fanaticism  in  the  world,  and  nowhere  so  violent  as 
here.    He  is  the  Sword  of  the  Prophet  and  of  Islam. 


CHAPTER    V 
THE   CONQUERED   TURK 

Tripoli,  October  15th, 

The  procession  of  the  Bersaglieri  passes  Turkish 
cafes.  The  habitues  of  these  cafes  used  to  sit  on  the 
sea-front,  slowly  sipping  their  Turkish  coffee,  smoking 
their  Ottoman  cigarettes,  slowly  enjoying  the  delicious 
sight  of  the  blue  sea  and  of  the  snow-white  line  of  surf 
breaking  against  the  base  of  the  old  Spanish  fort, 
slowly  enjoying  the  delicious  coolness  of  the  salt, 
Mediterranean  breeze.  There  was  little  traffic  in 
those  days,  and  even  if  a  dog  of  an  Unbeliever  did 
happen  to  come  along  in  a  carriage,  the  driver  would 
think  twice  before  he  disturbed  the  Turkish  coffee- 
drinkers.  Now  the  narrow  sea-front  is  crowded,  and 
the  Turks  must  sip  their  coffee  at  the  corners  of  the 
side  streets  and  narrow,  arched  lanes  running  upwards 
and  inland.  And  they  must  sip  their  coffee  without 
the  accompaniment  of  Turkish  cigarettes,  for  all 
the  cigarettes  of  the  Regie  have  been  bought  up  by 
the  invading  hordes,  and,  of  course,  no  more  can  be 
imported  from  Constantinople.  They  are  all  old 
men,  these  fezzed  and  bearded  coffee-drinkers. 
Evidently  they  could  not  follow  their  younger 
countrymen  into  the  desert.  Their  tottering  limbs, 
their  feeble  steps,  betray  that  fact  when  they  get  up 
to  hobble  off  v/ith  the  aid  of  a  stick.     In  their  moist 

74 


THE    CONQUERED    TURK  75 

eyes  there  is  infinite  sadness  ;  but  their  manner  is 
grave,  dignified,  and  not  in  the  least  subservient. 
They  must  know  that  the  glory  of  Islam  is  gone  for- 
ever, that  the  Turkish  Empire  is  already  doomed. 
They  must  know  that  the  Crescent  is  now  banished 
forever  from  the  continent  of  Africa.  The  Sultan 
of  Stamboul  may  continue  to  style  himself  master 
of  the  three  Continents  and  the  four  Seas.  Only  a 
few  centuries  ago  he  had  good  reason  to  do  so,  for 
he  was  a  power  of  the  first  magnitude  in  Europe, 
Asia,  and  Africa.  His  flag  flew  from  Mecca  to 
Algiers.  His  last  league  of  African  sea-coast  is  now 
gone,  and  the  Carthaginians  have  as  much  chance 
of  coming  back  to  the  coast-line  of  Tripoli  as  the 
Turks. 

The  rule  of  the  Turk  and  the  Karamanli  Sultans 
has  been  an  unbroken  horror,  nevertheless  I  cannot 
help  pitying  these  sad,  feeble,  despairing  old  servants 
of  the  Sublime  Porte,  meet  representatives  of  the 
crumbling  Empire  of  the  Ottomans.  They  have  not 
even  the  physical  strength  to  ride  out  into  the  desert 
and  die  there  with  arms  in  their  hands.  Theirs  is 
the  most  wretched  fate  of  all.  They  must  drag  out 
the  tail-end  of  a  miserable  existence  sitting  in  obscure 
cafSs,  watching  the  rough  foreign  soldiers  march  past, 
afraid  to  cross  the  street  lest  a  transport-waggon  or  a 
field-battery  suddenly  tear  round  the  corner.  Curious, 
how  close  the  resemblance  between  these  weary  old 
men  and  the  dying  Turkish  Empire.  It  is  so  curious 
that  I  cannot  help  reverting  to  it.  For  all  the  young 
and  active  Turks,  all  the  women  and  children,  have 
gone  away  or  do  not  show  themselves.  Only  these 
decayed  and  impotent  elders  remain. 

They  are  despised  and  contemned  by  the  Jews  and 
negroes  Avho  fawned  on  them  only  a  short  month  ago. 


76  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

Yesterday  I  saw  two  Europeans  signal  a  passing 
carriage  which  they  had  supposed  to  be  empty,  but 
which  really  contained  an  old  Turkish  gentleman  in  a 
fez.  The  young  Arab  driver  stopped  immediately, 
ejected  his  decrepit  co-religionist,  and  bowed  the 
Europeans  in.  The  old  Turk  then  produced  a  little 
red  cloth  bag  evidently  containing  a  few  mejidieh 
and  feebly  began,  in  a  quavering  treble,  to  haggle 
about  the  fare,  after  the  immemorial  custom  of  the 
East.  With  palsied  fingers  he  finally  deposited  a 
few  piastres  in  the  outstretched  palm  of  the  im- 
patient Arab.  But  the  latter  was  now  accustomed 
to  have  ten  times  as  much  tossed  to  him  by  Italian 
officers,  and  with  a  quick,  contemptuous  motion  of 
his  arm  he  jerked  the  few,  pathetic  coppers  into  the 
old  Turk's  palms  and  drove  recklessly  on  with  his 
load  of  Infidels. 

Meanwhile  the  Turks  are  being  scurvily  treated  by 
the  victors.  Turkish  officials  who  had  house  property 
in  the  town  have  been  forced  to  sell  their  houses, 
which  went  for  one-sixth  of  their  value.  It  was  bad 
business  for  those  ill-paid  officials,  but  it  was  good 
business  for  the  Banco  di  Roma. 

Past  the  Pasha's  Palace  the  Bersaglieri  march, 
their  brazen  trumpets  echoing  and  re-echoing  in  the 
archways  of  Charles  the  Fifth's  crumbling  citadel. 
They  encounter  long  strings  of  disdainful  camels 
with  sad,  pendulous  under-lips  like  those  of  old 
women  in  a  huff,  and  one  ear  moving  briskly  to  keep 
off  the  flies.  The  hide  of  some  of  these  beasts  is  so 
frayed  and  worn  that  it  is  hard  to  distinguish  it  from 
the  pile  of  rags  and  sacking  which  seems  to  form 
the  usual  burden  of  this  melancholy  ruminant.  On 
top  of  this  bag  of  rags  sits  sometimes  a  half-naked 
Arab    boy    regarding    events    with    Buddhistic    im- 


THE    CONQUERED    TURK  77 

mobility,  sometimes  a  veiled  Mohammedan  woman. 
Out  of  this  perambulating  rag-bag  issues,  in  front, 
a  long  tubular  neck  looking  like  a  boa-constrictor 
with  a  sheep's  head.  The  camels  and  the  great 
majority  of  the  natives  regard  the  proceedings  of 
the  Italians  with  an  eye  of  philosophic  calm.  Wrapped 
in  their  sole  garment,  a  piece  of  sacking  which  had 
evidently  contained  fodder,  some  natives  are  actually 
sleeping  on  the  roadside.  As  a  rule,  they  are  the 
Bedouins,  the  gypsies  of  the  desert.  A  few  dates 
and  a  drink  of  water  suffice  for  them.  Their  idea  of 
the  simple  life  is  probably  more  comprehensive  than 
that  of  ex-President  Roosevelt.  The  fall  of  empires 
does  not  matter  much  to  them.  They  keep  out  of 
politics. 

What  a  mixture  of  races  !  Berbers,  Jews,  negroes, 
Maltese,  Italians,  Turks  are  mingled  together  in  the 
crowds  which  watch  the  Italians  pass.  A  little 
apart  stand  two  Touaregs  with  veiled  faces.  The 
black  eyes  of  these  untamable  desert  tribesmen  are 
alone  visible.  They  glitter  with  something  of  that 
fixed,  phosphorescent  glitter  which  one  sees  in  the 
eye  of  a  wild  beast  watching  its  prey.  They  are 
watching  the  Italians,  the  happy,  ingenuous,  open- 
faced  soldier-lads  from  Florence.  Even  to  one 
another  they  make  no  remark.  They  are  silent  as 
their  own  camels,  now  squatted  oi>  the  ground  close 
by,  soon  perhaps  to  be  crossing  the  desert  on  their  way 
to  the  Turkish  camp.  It  was  as  a  masked  Touareg, 
they  say,  that  Fethi  Bey  succeeded  in  crossing  the 
Tunisian  frontier,  and  in  joining  the  army  which  he 
now  commands.  May  not  some  of  these  veiled  men 
be  Turkish  officers  ? 

Of  all  races  of  men  these  Touaregs,  these  hardy 
and  desperate  marauders  of  the  Sahara,  are  the  most 


78  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

untamable  and  fierce.  Even  in  paying  friendly  visits 
they  are  as  reluctant  to  part  with  their  arms  as 
a  very  short-sighted  man  would  be  to  part  with 
his  glasses.  A  number  of  them  once  called  on  the 
British  Consul  here  to  solicit  some  favour,  but  it 
took  the  consular  staff  a  full  half-hour  to  persuade 
the  visitors  to  leave  their  arms  behind  in  an  ante- 
chamber. The  Touaregs  finally  gave  way  on  con- 
dition that  one  of  them  should  remain  behind  to 
watch  over  the  rifles  of  his  companions  ! 

Nearly  as  wild  and  lawless  as  the  Touaregs  are  the 
Ir'reh,  or  Wandering  Arabs  who  left  Tunisia  at  the 
time  of  the  French  conquest  sooner  than  submit  to 
foreign  rule.  They  look  like  tigers  brought  to  bay. 
And  they  are  brought  to  bay.  The  hated  foreigner 
has  tracked  them  to  their  last  lair. 

Onward  thunders  the  triumphal  procession  of  the 
Bersaglieri.  Smooth-faced  black  eunuchs  look  timidly 
at  the  rough  soldiers.  Women  peep  fearfully  at  them 
through  barred  windows.  The  street  children  enjoy 
the  show  with  all  their  hearts.  Little  brown,  dusty 
Arabs  run,  almost  naked,  after  the  soldiers  and  cut 
wild,  fantastic  capers  in  the  air  when  they  hear  the 
band.  They  beg  for  coppers,  they  black  boots. 
Already  they  have  picked  up  a  few  words  of  Italian. 
They  race  after  carriages  and  hang  on  to  the  rear 
like  monkeys.  It  is  clear  that  they  have  no  cares  of 
State  on  their  minds.  They  imagine  that  for  some 
reason  or  other  an  unusually  large  number  of  Cook's 
tourists  have  come  ashore.  That  is  all.  As  yet  they 
do  not  understand.  They  wonder  vaguely  at  the 
sad  faces  of  the  old  Turks  sipping  coffee  on  the 
side-paths. 

Rub-a-dub-dub  go  the  drums.  They  echo  un- 
cannily in  the  empty  houses,  for  not  one  house  in 


THE    CONQUERED    TURK  79 

forty  is  occupied  and  open.  The  streets  are  still  a 
long  line  of  shuttered  shops  and  padlocked  doors. 

Rub-a-dub-dub  go  the  drums  through  the  Jewish 
quarter.  The  Jews  are  all  there,  not  one  of  them  is 
absent.  They  stand  in  no  fear  of  the  Italians.  They 
started  to  plunder  the  citadel  as  soon  as  the  warships 
began  to  bombard  the  town.  In  the  Italian  language 
they  hail  the  soldiers  with  friendly,  patronising  cries. 
For  some  reason  or  other  the  Tripolitan  Jews  regard 
this  expedition  as  their  "  show."  The  local  Italian 
newspaper  is  edited  by  a  Hebrew,  and  the  Italian 
occupation  of  Tripoli  will  result  in  the  creation  of 
about  a  score  of  Tripolitan  Jewish  millionaires,  just 
as  the  French  occupation  of  Morocco  will  surely  result 
in  the  creation  of  a  score  of  Morocco  Jewish  million- 
aires. In  Tripoli,  as  in  Morocco,  the  wily  Jew  will 
be  sure  to  benefit  by  the  change  of  masters,  no  matter 
who  loses.  If  the  Italians  want  to  improve  the  harbour 
and  the  town  they  must  do  business  with  the  Jews, 
and,  despite  their  high-pressure  patriotism,  the  Jews 
are  not  likely  to  let  them  off  cheap. 

The  Ottoman  Greeks  are  indifferent.  It  is  all  the 
same  to  them.  They  won't  starve,  no  matter  who 
comes.  The  woolly,  shining  negroes  take  the  whole 
thing  with  the  greatest  good  humour.  Their  good- 
natured  faces  are  wreathed  in  perpetual  smiles. 
Their  long,  flexible,  india-rubber  lips,  resembling  in 
the  matter  of  size  a  pair  of  bicycle  tyres,  are  stretched 
in  a  pleasant,  inoffensive,  perpetual  grin  which 
reaches  from  ear  to  ear.  The  bronzed  and  bony 
Berber  draws  his  faded  baracan  closer  around  him 
as  he  looks.  It  is  as  if  the  invaders  from  the  north 
brought  with  them  an  icy,  Alpine  blast.  The  Arab, 
lighter  in  hue,  is  a  miracle  of  picturesqueness  in  his 
gracious,  ample,  flowing  robes  of  snowy  white.    The 


80  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

effeminate  city  Arabs  leave  half-open  their  trans- 
parent burnous,  so  that  their  embroidered  vests  and 
their  silk  pantaloons  may  be  better  seen.  If  the 
trousers  are  very  ample  and  the  turban  green,  the 
wearer  is  a  wealthy  Jew.  If  not,  he  is  the  descendant 
of  one  of  the  eleventh-century  conquerors. 

Amid  the  crowd  are  travellers  from  regions  of  the 
Dark  Continent  as  far  apart  as  London  and  Tripoli. 
The  slim  negroes  whom  you  see  squatting  over  there 
on  the  ground  come  from  the  Niger.  These  massive 
and  heavy  tribesmen  are  from  the  Nile.  You  can 
recognise  the  Fezzanis  by  their  powerful  frames  and 
well-developed  muscles.  The  shoulder  attains  in 
some  of  them  a  formidable  development,  fitting  them 
to  pose  for  statues  of  Hercules  or  to  enter  the  ring 
against  Johnson  the  boxer.  These  peoples  from 
widely  separated  parts  of  Africa  have  no  more  chance 
of  understanding  one  another's  language  than 
Japanese  and  Patagonian  peasants  would  have  if 
they  happened  to  meet  in  a  Wapping  boarding- 
house. 

In  some  of  the  streets  the  shopkeepers  used,  under 
the  old  regime,  to  be  so  fanatical  that  they  slammed 
their  doors  whenever  they  saw  a  Christian  dog 
approach.  To-day  there  is  no  such  sign  of  religious 
intolerance.  A  European  could  enter  a  mosque  if  he 
had  a  mind  to  do  so.  Before,  it  would  have  meant 
death.  The  Italians  will,  however,  safeguard  the 
sanctity  of  the  mosques  as  the  French  did  in  Tunis. 
But  they  may  make  one  exception.  There  is  a 
mosque  here,  the  Pasha's  mosque,  which  was  once 
an  old  Spanish  church.  It  was  converted  by  the 
Karamanli  Sultans,  first  into  a  necropolis  and  then 
into  a  mosque.  The  wooden  doors  are  richly  carved. 
The  roof  is  made  up  of  a  number  of  little  cupolas 


THE   CONQUERED  TURK  81 

resting  on  wooden  columns  taken  from  the  timbers 
of  a  captured  Christian  ship.  Under  Italian  auspices 
this  mosque  may  again  be  used  for  purposes  of  Chris- 
tian worship.  But  it  would  be  a  wiser  policy  to  leave 
it  alone. 


CHAPTER    VI 

THE  SIEGE   OF    THE    DESERT 

Minerva  Hotel,  Tripoli, 

October  16th. 

The  first  step  in  the  Tripoli  adventure  was  a  bom- 
bardment. The  second  is  a  siege.  The  Italians  are 
besieging  the  desert.  They  have  sat  down  before  it 
and  called  upon  it  to  surrender.  The  desolate  wail 
of  the  Saharan  night-wind,  the  nightly  crackle  of 
Turkish  rifles  far  out  among  the  sand-hills,  are,  so 
far,  the  only  reply  they  have  received. 

The  lines  of  the  besiegers  begin  only  half  an  hour's 
walk  from  the  place  where  they  landed.  What  a 
difference  from  the  state  of  things  in  Manchuria, 
where  the  base  was  always  a  good  day's  journey  on 
horseback  from  the  positions  !  Here  the  war- 
correspondent  can  reach  the  Italian  firing-line  on 
the  edge  of  the  desert  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour  by 
carriage. 

In  Manchuria  the  gaps  between  one  army  corps 
and  another  were  so  great  that  one  could  not  see 
across  them  even  with  field-glasses ;  and  in  the 
intervals  between  the  armies  on  either  side,  one  felt 
sometimes  as  if  he  were  in  some  unexplored,  un- 
occupied part  of  China  !  And  yet  no  attempt  was 
ever  made  to  rush  these  treacherous  open  spaces. 
If  Kuroki  had  suddenly  dashed  between  Rennen- 
kampf  and  Linievitch,  those  Russian  generals  would 

82 


THE    SIEGE    OF    THE    DESERT  83 

have  closed  on  him  hke  a  pair  of  gigantic  pincers. 
If  Mischenko  and  his  Cossacks  had  ridden  in  between 
Nogi  and  Oku  they  would  never  have  ridden  back 
again. 

But  in  Tripoli  it  is  different.  The  town  of  Tripoli 
is  situated  on  a  little  peninsula.  The  Italians  hold 
that  little  peninsula  and  practically  nothing  more. 
Their  troops  stand  shoulder-to-shoulder  in  trenches 
from  one  side  of  this  peninsula  almost  to  the  other, 
in  a  semicircle  round  the  town.  This  arrangement 
is  prehistoric.  It  belongs  to  the  Stone  Age.  I 
wonder  if  Caneva  adopted  it  because  he  knew  the 
timidity  of  his  soldiers,  because  he  knew  that  he 
could  not  trust  them  to  hold  various  strong  positions 
out  in  the  desert,  far  away  from  the  town.  In  the 
present  age  generals  defending  towns  hold  various 
strong  positions  round  about  them  and  keep  a  large 
reserve  somewhere  in  the  centre.  If  an  English 
general  were  holding  London  against  an  invader 
advancing  from  the  south,  he  would  have  a  powerful 
entrenched  force  at  Caterham,  where,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  last  Conservative  Government  did  buy 
land  with  a  view  to  constructing  forts  on  it.  He 
would  not  entrench  himself  at  Streatham,  and  thus 
leave  the  enemy  free  to  drop  shells  in  Trafalgar 
Square  and  on  Buckingham  Palace.  In  Tripoli, 
however,  the  Italians  are  massed  together  like 
policemen  at  the  end  of  a  street.  They  have  practi- 
cally no  scouts  and  no  outposts.  The  Turks  ride  up 
and  pepper  them  regularly.  The  Italians  have  to  rely 
on  the  humanity  of  the  Ottoman  to  spare  Tripoli  the 
terrors  of  a  bombardment.  With  his  field  artillery 
Nesciat  Bey  could  drop  shells  on  the  citadel  as  often 
as  he  liked,  for,  so  far,  there  is  no  artillery  on  land 
that  could  prevent  him.     When  the  roles  were  re- 


84  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

versed,  and  the  town  was  Turkish,  the  Itahans  had 
no  compunction  in  shelling  the  town  and  killing 
many  innocent  people.  But  what  is  the  good  of 
being  Christian  unless  you  enjoy  a  certain  privilege 
in  these  matters  ?  When  the  Turk  does  them  there 
is,  naturally,  a  roar. 

I  have  never  in  war  seen  anything  more  striking 
than  this  Tripolitan  battle-front.  The  oasis  ends 
abruptly  like  a  green  carpet  spread  upon  sand.  On 
one  side  vegetation,  date-palms,  gardens,  wells, 
houses,  life.  On  the  other,  sand,  aridity,  the  desert, 
death.  At  a  certain  well-defined  line  the  oasis  ends 
and  there  begins  another  element,  almost  as  different 
from  the  arable  land  as  is  the  sea  itself.  It  is  the 
blindingly  white,  sandy,  thirsty,  illimitable  waste. 
Search  it  as  you  will  with  field-glasses,  you  find  it 
endless,  boundless,  uninhabited,  uninhabitable,  every- 
where the  same.  Looking  at  it  is  like  looking  at  the 
ocean  for  the  first  time.  It  is  an  event  in  one's  life. 
And  the  desert  is  even  more  impressive  than  the 
ocean,  for  it  moves  not,  it  supports  no  life,  animal  or 
vegetable.  It  is  dead.  With  its  innumerable  dunes, 
it  looks  like  a  stormy  ocean  suddenly  turned  to  sand. 
There  are  ripples  in  it.  There  are  billows.  There 
are  very  high  waves  from  whose  sharp  curved  crests 
the  fine  white  sand  is  blown  like  foam.  But,  unlike 
the  ocean,  it  reflects  not  the  moon  nor  the  stars.  Its 
face  shines  in  the  starlight  with  something  of  that 
dull,  grey  pallor  which  you  see  on  the  face  of  a  corpse 
in  the  dark.  Stray  dogs,  howling  at  a  great  distance, 
fill  it  with  a  mournful  baying  like  the  wail  of  lost 
souls. 

The  Italians  are  besieging  the  desert.  They  are 
constructing  trenches  in  front  of  it.  They  have  en- 
compassed it  round  about  with  a  mud-wall.     They 


THE    SIEGE    OF    THE    DESERT  85 

have  loop-holed  and  crenellated  this  mud-wall.  They 
sleep  behind  it.  They  have  pointed  batteries  of 
mountain-guns,  machine-guns,  naval  guns  at  that 
inscrutable,  grim,  grey.  Sphinx-like  face  which  has 
seen  so  many  empires  pass.  All  day  long  the  soldiers 
gaze  into  that  Saharan  furnace.  Sand,  sand,  nothing 
but  sand  !  A  withered  fig-tree  !  A  land  condemned 
by  Allah  to  eternal  desolation  yet  tinged  by  the 
mysterious  sanctity  attaching  to  things  afflicted  by 
the  Hand  of  God  ! 

About  half  a  mile  out  in  this  sea  of  sand,  just 
south  of  Bumeliana,  is  a  hillock  with  a  sharp  edge  on 
top  and  with  very  steep  sides,  a  hillock  exactly  re- 
sembling a  wave  about  to  break.  On  top  of  that 
hillock  is  an  outpost  consisting  of  six  or  seven  soldiers. 
This  is  the  ultimate  Italian  outpost.  There  is  nothing 
between  it  and  the  enemy's  outpost  of  500  Turks  in 
the  little  oasis  of  Senit  Beni-Adam  ("  Garden  of  Sons 
of  Men  ").  The  men  converse  with  me  affably.  One 
of  them  was  a  barber  in  New  York,  another  a  fruit- 
seller  in  Whitechapel  :  both  speak  English  of  sorts. 
They  do  not  seem  to  be  particularly  fond  of  war  and 
are  sorry,  I  dare  say,  that  they  did  not  take  out 
English  or  American  papers  when  they  were  abroad. 

No  soldiers  whom  I  ever  encountered  cared  for 
war,  and  least  enthusiastic  of  all  were  the  fierce, 
legendary  Cossacks  of  the  Tsar  with  whom  I  lived 
in  Manchuria.  I  am  beginning  to  suspect  that  the 
only  warlike  classes  in  any  country  are  the  ferocious 
folk  who  spout  from  jingo  platforms  and  write  in 
blood-and-thunder  newspapers.  These  dull  Italian 
peasants,  barbers,  and  ice-cream  vendors,  shade 
their  eyes  from  the  sun  as  they  peer  into  the  mys- 
terious, the  inscrutable  desert  into  which,  as  into  a 
safe  fortress,  their  unseen  enemy  has  fled.    They  do 


86  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

not  even  know  the  name  of  the  people  with  whom 
they  are  fighting.  The  word  "  Turk  "  being  evidently 
unknown  to  them,  they  surmount  the  difficulty  by 
means  of  a  circumlocution.  They  speak  of  the  enemy 
as  "  the  people  of  this  country  with  whom  we  are  at 
war,"  just  as  the  Russian  soldier  always  speaks  of 
the  enemy  as  Ony — "  they." 

On  my  way  back  from  the  outpost  on  the  sand-hill 
and  before  I  reach  the  Italian  lines,  I  pass  over  the 
site  of  a  Turkish  encampment.  It  had  evidently 
been  occupied  by  a  few  hundred  men,  and  is  littered 
with  old  tin  cans,  broken  bottles,  Turkish  documents, 
and  empty  Turkish  cartridges  of  which  I  collect 
scores.  Close  by  is  an  unloaded  shell  from  an  Italian 
warship,  which  shows  that  the  bombarding  fleet  was 
well  informed  as  to  the  position  of  the  enemy  and 
had  got  the  range  very  accurately.  The  pots  and 
pans  and  odds  and  ends  which  the  Turks  left  behind 
show  that  their  equipment  is  very  primitive,  and  that 
their  tents  will  hardly  keep  out  the  rain.  They 
seem  to  be  well  supplied  with  ammunition,  however, 
for  they  left  several  hundred  boxes  of  machine-gun 
cartridges  behind  them  in  the  cavalry  barrack  which 
now  forms  the  Italian  left  flank. 

On  returning  to  the  lines,  I  meet  the  first  captured 
Turkish  spy.  He  is  a  spare,  medium-sized,  black- 
bearded,  very  sunburnt  man  dressed  in  a  dirty  Arab 
costume,  but  though  he  evidently  wears  this  dress 
for  purposes  of  disguise,  there  is  no  possibility  of 
disguising  the  strong,  resolute  face  and  drilled  figure 
of  the  trained  soldier.  He  came  in  from  the  desert,  but 
was  stopped  by  an  Italian  sentry  and  searched.  That 
search  brought  to  light  a  large  Mauser  pistol,  wooden 
frame  and  all  complete.  One  of  the  half-dozen  armed 
soldiers   who   accompany  him  carries  this  damning 


THE    SIEGE    OF    THE    DESERT  87 

piece  of  evidence,  which  must  have  been  hung  over 
the  prisoner's  shoulder  inside  his  djellaha  by  means 
of  a  twisted  band  of  Hnen  cloth. 


At  night  the  curse  which  lies  upon  this  void  seems 
to  exhale  from  the  ground,  and  wander  to  and  fro  in 
the  shape  of  demons.  Sentinels  in  lonely  places 
almost  go  mad  with  fright.  After  peering  for  hours 
into  the  grey,  mysterious  "  ghoud,"  their  wits  some- 
times wander.  They  see  dark,  moving  shapes  which 
are  not  of  this  earth.  They  fire  and  rouse  the  whole 
weary  camp.  Sometimes  donkeys,  mules,  dogs,  and 
other  animals  lost  or  abandoned  by  the  Turks  are 
guided  by  instinct  towards  the  oasis  where  their  ap- 
pearance, in  the  night-time,  frequently  gives  rise  to 
false  alarms,  to  furious  firing.  The  strain  of  these 
nightly  frights  is  beginning  to  tell  on  the  nerves  of 
these  young  and  inexperienced  officers  and  men.  It 
is  a  pleasure  to  them  when  the  attack  is  real.  In 
such  cases  the  story  is  always  the  same.  "  The 
Turks  attacked  at  between  one  and  two  o'clock  in 
the  morning.  They  had  horsemen  with  them.  They 
approached  to  within  a  distance  of  three  hundred 
yards,  firing  very  heavily.  In  the  morning  the  corpses 
of  two  Turkish  soldiers  were  found  out  in  the  Meshya." 
•  •  I  >  I  « 

Rp-rp-rp-rp-rp-rp-rp-rp-rp  !  go  the  Italian  rifles. 
It  is  two  in  the  morning  and  the  desert  lies  grey  and 
corpse-like  beneath  the  brilliant  stars.  Another 
alarm,  a  real  alarm  this  time.  Red  rockets  soar  into 
the  air  from  half  a  dozen  different  points  along  the 
Italian  line.  The  battleships  sweep  the  desert  with 
their  search-lights. 

Yes,  it  is  a  real  alarm,  for  there  is  an  answering 


88  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

volley  and  the  dead,  sombre  void  leaps  suddenly  to 
vicious  life  and  brilliancy  with  vivid  flashes  out 
among  the  sand-hills  two  miles  away.  With  rifle- 
bullets,  with  shell  from  mountain  batteries  the 
Italians  sweep  the  cruel,  treacherous  waste,  no 
longer  silent,  no  longer  dead.  They  all  face  the 
Enemy,  the  desert.  Ten-inch  shells  from  the  battle- 
ships burst  amid  the  dunes  with  vivid  flashes  and 
clouds  of  sand  twenty  feet  high.  The  Turks  are  in- 
visible. The  search-lights  do  not  betray  their  presence. 
They  are  hidden  somewhere  in  the  hollows.  .  .  . 
And  lo  !  while  the  Italians  are  concentrating  all 
their  attention  on  the  desert,  I  fancy  that  I  see  a 
gigantic  figure  rise  suddenly  from  the  dark  town 
behind  and  grin  at  them  with  fleshless,  skeleton 
jaws.  Another  enemy  has  appeared  upon  the  scene, 
an  enemy  more  formidable  than  the  Turks,  more 
terrible  than  the  desert — Cholera  ! 

•  •»■•• 

As  I  write  these  lines  I  am  almost  deafened  by  the 
funeral  shrieks  of  a  Jewish  family  on  the  other  side 
of  the  narrow  lane.    By  leaning  out  of  my  window  I 
could  almost  touch  the  house  of  death  with  my  hand. 
A  member  of  the  family  has   been   carried   off  by 
cholera.     It  is  the  second  death  in  that  house  inside 
of  a  week.    Two  Mohammedan  cholera  victims  were 
carried   past   my  window   yesterday.      In   the   first 
three  days  there  were  thirty  deaths.     So  far  the 
number  of  victims  has  been  exactly  doubled  each 
day.     The  officials  are  now  becoming  reticent,  how- 
ever, and  the  merchants  are  combining  with  them 
to  hush  up  the  appalling  truth,  for  fear  of  injury  to 
commercial  and  military  interests.    An  Arab  died  at 
one  of  the  outposts  last  night.    They  say  (officially) 


THE    SIEGE    OF    THE    DESERT  89 

that  he  died  of  hunger.  Thousands  of  people  are 
starving.  The  dining-room  window  of  the  Hotel 
Minerva,  at  which  I  am  staying,  is  on  the  ground 
floor  and  opens  out  on  the  street.  At  meal-time 
every  day  a  frightful  procession  passes  in  front  of  it, 
and  presses  emaciated  faces,  white  sightless  eyeballs, 
horribly  distorted  limbs  against  the  window-bars,  a 
foot  from  the  jovial  dining-room  table.  Objects 
which  would  in  England  have  been  mercifully  hidden 
away  in  some  Home  for  Incurables  parade  here  in 
the  full  light  of  day.  Half  a  dozen  diseases  from 
typhoid  to  incipient  cholera  hold  on  to  the  window- 
bars.  They  would  fall  back  into  the  street  if  they 
did  not  do  so.  Their  pallid  hands  are  clutched  in  a 
corpse-like  clutch  on  the  iron  railings. 

Italy  has  got  a  nice  handful.  Like  Dead  Sea  fruit, 
Tripoli  has  turned  to  dust  and  ashes  in  her  grasp. 
She  wanted  to  annex  territory.  She  has  annexed 
sand,  poverty,  rags,  misery,  cholera,  and  corruption. 

Was  it  necessary  for  her  to  go  abroad  ?  Has  she 
not  got  enough  of  these  commodities  at  home  ? 


CHAPTER    VII 
HOW  THE  TURKS    LEFT  TRIPOLI 

"Night  clos'd  around  the  conqueror's  way. 
And  lightnings  show'd  the  distant  hill, 
Where  those  who  lost  that  dreadful  day. 
Stood  few  and  faint,  but  fearless  still." 

Let  us  say  a  good  word  for  the  conquered  !  Let  us 
tell  the  true  story  of  how  the  Turks  left  Tripoli !  It 
is  not  meet  that  an  Irishman  should  join  in  this  chorus 
of  contempt  and  ridicule  that  is  being  addressed  by 
all  the  world  to  brave  men  who  failed  through  no  fault 
of  their  own. 

I  was  talking  to-day  to  a  young  officer  at  the  front 
who  twice  made  a  painfully  bad  impression  on  me. 
First  he  showed  me  a  number  of  religious  medals 
which  his  mother  had  given  him  :  a  medal  of  the 
Immaculate  Conception,  a  medal  of  St.  Joseph,  a 
medal  of  St.  Aloysius  de  Gonzaga,  a  medal  of  St. 
Anthony  of  Padua,  a  medal  of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi. 
Then  he  openly  scoffed  at  them  and  alluded  jeeringly 
to  the  weak-mindedness  of  women  on  religious  matters. 
I  did  not  honour  him  any  the  more  for  scoffing  at  his 
mother's  humble  gifts  or  for  laughing  at  his  religion. 
Even  if  he  were  a  Mohammedan  I  would  esteem  him 
more  for  believing  in  the  religion  which  he  professed 
than  for  jeering  at  it.  I  changed  the  subject.  I 
talked  about  the  Turks.  This  young  officer  loudly 
asserted  that  the  Turks  had  fled  like  madmen  when 

90 


HOW    THE    TURKS    LEFT    TRIPOLI      91 

they  heard  the  big  guns  of  the  warships.  This  remark 
stung  me,  and  I  could  see  that  it  grated  unpleasantly 
on  my  companion,  Herr  von  Gottberg,  who  is  a 
German  officer  of  a  very  Chauvinist  sort,  but  who 
never  in  my  hearing  spoke  of  the  French  army  or  of 
any  other  brave  opponents  save  in  terms  of  high 
and  courtly  praise.  I  almost  felt  inclined  to  remind 
my  young  Italian  officer  that  on  a  hundred  battle- 
fields the  Turks  have  shown  the  world  that  no  troops 
in  Europe  fear  the  roar  of  big  guns  as  little  as  they. 
No  Austrian,  no  Russian,  no  nation  which  ever 
measured  swords  with  the  Turk  on  fair  field  of 
battle  would  ever  speak  of  them  like  this.  The  remark 
was  a  glaring  breach  of  military  etiquette.  It  was 
unchivalrous  and  it  was  untrue.  Moreover,  it  came 
with  rather  an  ill  grace  from  the  one  and  only  Euro- 
pean army  which  ever  showed  twenty  thousand 
clean  pairs  of  heels  to  niggers. 

But  ignoring  my  companion's  impatience  and  my 
own  silence,  the  young  officer  rattled  on.  He  showed 
me  Italian  newspapers  in  which  it  was  clearly  demon- 
strated that  "  the  legend  of  Turkish  valour  is  now 
destroyed."  One  writer  declared  that  the  Tripoli 
forts  could  easily  have  made  a  more  stubborn  defence. 
This  writer  had  visited  the  Sultanie  Fort,  and  he  dwelt 
long  on  the  damage  which  it  might  have  inflicted  on  a 
hostile  fleet  had  it  only  been  in  proper  hands — he 
meant,  I  presume,  in  Italian  hands. 

At  this  point  my  patience  gave  way,  and  I  pointed 
out  that  this  was  ridiculous.  The  forts  were  worse 
than  useless.  They  were  death-traps.  All  the  foreign 
military  men  who  had  ever  seen  them  admitted  it. 

But  my  Italian  officer  would  not  agree  to  this. 
He  showed  me  another  article  in  which  the  Turks 
were   roundly   accused   of   cowardice.      This    writer 


92  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

proved  at  great  length  and  to  his  own  satisfaction 
that  Constitutionalism  had  had  a  dissolvent  effect 
on  the  religious  fanaticism,  and  consequently  on  the 
fighting  capacity  of  the  Turk. 

That  the  Turks  retreated,  practically  without 
firing  a  shot,  is  due,  not  to  their  inefficiency,  but  to 
their  humanity.  This  statement  may  seem  incredible, 
but  I  have  it  on  the  best  authority.  Like  a  Byronic 
hero,  the  Tripolitan  Turk  has  left  a  Corsair's  name 
to  other  times,  linked  with  one  virtue,  and  a 
thousand  crimes.  The  one  virtue  came  at  the  last 
moment,  but  it  was  nevertheless  a  virtue  Two 
of  the  Consuls — the  German  Consul,  Dr.  Alfred  Tilger, 
who  is  also  Dean  of  the  Consular  Corps,  and  the 
French  Vice-Consul,  M.  Theuillet,  arranged  that  in 
the  dead  of  night  a  dozen  of  the  leading  Turkish 
officers  and  functionaries  should  assemble  secretly 
in  the  German  Consulate. 

This  house  is  situated  outside  the  town,  in  the 
oasis,  and  is  surrounded  by  palm  gardens  and  by 
the  villas  of  the  Turkish  military  leaders.  These 
two  Consuls  were  acting  without  the  knowledge 
of  their  colleagues,  for  if  they  had  waited  till  the 
others  approved  of  the  step  they  wished  to  take 
they  would  be  waiting  still.  For,  as  frequently 
happens  in  very  much  out-of-the-way  places  abroad, 
the  Consular  body  in  Tripoli  was  torn  by  internal 
Jealousies  and  dissensions.  You  find  the  same 
pleasant  state  of  things  prevailing  in  some  Persian, 
Siamese,  Anatolian,  Moroccan,  and  Chinese  towns. 
There  are  little,  forgotten  places  in  India  where 
there  are  not  a  dozen  Europeans,  yet  where  every 
one  of  that  dozen  is  at  daggers  drawn  with  all  the 
rest.  Isolation,  accompanied  by  extreme  heat  or 
extreme  cold,  and  aggravated  by  the-same-old-faces- 


HOW    THE    TURKS    LEFT    TRIPOLI      93 

every-day  grievance,  leads  to  the  bitterest  enmities 
it  is  possible  to  imagine,  I  am  told  that  the  most 
poisonous  hatreds  are  engendered  in  Polar  expeditions 
where  a  number  of  men  are  confined  for  six  months 
to  the  one  ice-house.  Moreover,  in  the  present 
instance  the  Italian  Consul  would  have  had  the 
right  to  take  part  in  any  general  representation  made 
by  the  Consular  Corps,  while  some  of  the  Consuls 
representing  the  smaller  nations  were  quite  capable  of 
selling  the  Turkish  plans  to  the  Italians. 

Among  the  Turkish  officers  and  functionaries  who 
came  was  the  Defterdar ;  General  Munir  Pasha ;  the 
Political  Agent ;  and  Colonel  Nesciat  Bey,  The  faces  of 
the  Ottoman  leaders  wore  a  strangely  grim  and  deter- 
mined expression.  It  was  clear  that  they  had  just 
arrived  at  some  desperate  decision.  And,  in  fact,  it 
was  because  they  had  heard  of  that  desperate  decision 
that  the  two  Consuls  had  summoned  this  extra- 
ordinary meeting.  As  no  time  was  to  be  lost,  the 
Consuls  plunged  at  once  into  the  subject  which  was 
uppermost  in  the  minds  of  all  by  begging  Nesciat 
Bey  to  leave  quietly  for  the  sake  of  the  women  and 
children,  and  thus  spare  the  to\Mi  the  horrors  of  a 
prolonged  bombardment.  The  Ottoman  general 
was  grimly  determined,  however,  to  dispute  every 
inch  of  ground  and  to  perish  with  his  men  beneath 
the  ruins  of  Tripoli.  In  this  desperate  resolv^e  he 
was  supported  by  all  his  officers,  eleven  of  whom  were 
present  at  this  conference.  Any  one  who  knows  the 
Turkish  soldier,  any  one  who  has  read  the  heroic 
story  of  Plevna  and  Silistria,  will  readily  admit  that 
Osmanli  soldiers  were  quite  capable  of  this  heroism. 
The  Consuls  recognised  with  horror  that  they  stood 
in  the  presence  of  men  who  had  already  passed 
through  the  terrors  which  guard  the  gate  of  death 


94  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

and  keep  most  of  us  as  far  as  we  can  get  from  that 
awful  portal.  They  begged  the  Ottoman  leader  to 
change  his  mind.  They  pointed  out  how  thousands 
of  innocent  lives  would  inevitably  be  sacrificed  if  he  did 
not  do  so.  They  argued,  begged,  implored,  but  it  was 
all  in  vain.  The  Turks  remained  firm.  And  their  plan 
was  not  a  bad  one.  Not  more  than  a  thousand  sailors 
could  land.  The  sea  was  not  smooth,  and  they  could 
be  picked  off  as  they  came  ashore  by  the  Turkish 
sharpshooters.  Now,  the  battleships  could  not  shell 
these  riflemen,  for  a  projectile  from  a  vessel  four 
miles  off  cannot  be  guided  to  the  eighth  of  an  inch, 
and  there  would  be  extreme  danger  of  the  explosives 
falling  among  the  Italian  sailors.  That  danger 
would  be  worse  in  case  the  bluejackets  got  into  the 
town  and  there  was  hand-to-hand  fighting  in  the 
streets.  The  battleships  would  not  know  where  to 
fire.  And  in  the  excessively  narrow  and  tortuous 
lanes  of  the  town  the  Turks  would  have  a  splendid 
chance  of  polishing  off  one  landing  -  party  after 
another  until  Italy  had  got  tired  of  having  her  blue- 
jackets thus  disposed  of  piecemeal. 

What  put  it  in  the  power  of  the  Turks  to  carry  out 
some  incredibly  desperate  coup,  to  strike  some  blow 
which  would  astonish  the  world,  was  the  fact  that 
there  were  stored  in  the  town  very  large  supplies  of 
powder  and  projectiles  of  every  kind.  "  Besides  the 
full  powder-magazines,"  says  an  Italian  writer, 
"  there  were  in  the  forts  two  great  stores  of  powder 
which  might  have  lasted  throughout  a  long  war." 

In  the  chapter  headed  "  Caneva's  Neglect  to 
disarm  the  Arabs  "  the  reader  will  find  a  more  com- 
plete account  of  the  amount  of  explosives  which  the 
Turks  left  behind  in  Tripoli. 

Since  they  could  not  take  these  explosives  away 


HOW    THE    TURKS    LEFT    TRIPOLI      95 

with  them,  why  should  they  not  utilise  them  for 
mines  ?  Why  should  they  not  blow  up  the  soldiers 
when  they  installed  themselves  in  the  barracks,  blow 
up  Admiral  Borea-Ricci  as  soon  as  he  had  made 
himself  at  home  in  the  Palace  ?  The  mysterious  old 
dungeons  of  that  building  are  known  to  few.  The 
most  sequestered  of  them  could  easily  have  been 
filled  to  the  door  with  most  powerful  explosives,  and 
hundreds  of  Arabs  would  have  been  glad  to  be  en- 
trusted with  the  duty  of  crouching  in  the  gloom  until 
they  got  the  signal  that  the  time  had  come  to  apply 
the  fatal  spark. 

Even  at  this  time  there  were  three  thousand  well- 
armed  Arabs  with  the  Turks,  and  nothing  would  have 
pleased  those  Arabs  better  than  to  be  thus  let  loose, 
not  only  on  the  hated  giaour,  but  also  on  an  illimitable 
quantity  of  loot.  The  two  greatest  passions  of  the  Arab 
would  be  appealed  to — his  passion  for  blood  and  his 
passion  for  money.  The  advantage  which  the  natives 
enjoyed  later,  during  the  fighting  in  the  oasis,  was  as 
nothing  to  the  advantage  they  would  have  enjoyed 
in  that  labyrinth  of  streets  and  blind  alleys.  As  the 
lanes  are  joined  overhead  by  very  many  arches, 
after  the  usual  Oriental  bazaar  style,  Arabs  driven 
out  of  one  house  could  take  refuge  in  the  houses 
on  the  opposite  side  of  the  street.  Without  burning 
down  the  town  and  sacrificing  many  thousands  of 
innocent  lives  it  would  have  been  impossible  for 
the  Italians  to  have  driven  them  out.  In  fact, 
Captain  Cagni  could  not  have  driven  them  out.  His 
repulse  and  the  loss  of  perhaps  all  of  his  men  would 
have  been  practically  certain,  and  Admiral  Faravelli 
would  have  had  to  wait  seven  days  more  for  the 
transports. 

Even  if  the  Turks  and  Arabs  were  driven  out  of 


96  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

the  town,  they  could  in  the  environs  find  excellent 
cover  every  dozen  yards  or  so  behind  walls  and  houses 
and  clumps  of  earth  and  palm  trees.  After  the  Italians 
had  been  studying  the  ground  for  a  fortnight  the 
Arabs,  as  General  Caneva  admits,  derived  infinite 
advantage  from  their  superior  knowledge  of  it. 
How  vastly  greater  would  not  this  advantage  be 
if  the  Italians  had  been  attacked  while  entering  the 
oasis  for  the  first  time  ! 

This  scheme  of  defence  could  only  end  in  one  way 
— in  the  recall  to  the  ships  of  such  bluejackets  as 
managed  to  remain  alive  and  in  a  prolonged  and 
dreadful  bombardment  of  the  town  by  the  Italian 
fleet,  in  a  rain  of  fire  and  iron  which  would  not  leave 
a  house  intact  or  an  inhabitant  alive.  This  the  two 
Consuls  saw  clearly,  and  hence  their  anxiety  that  the 
Turks  should  leave  without  a  fight. 

The  Consuls  were  not,  of  course,  thinking  of 
themselves  alone.  They  were  thinking  of  the  Euro- 
peans, men,  women,  and  children,  who  had  been 
unable  to  leave  Tripoli,  not  because  they  had  elected 
to  remain,  but  because  the  Arab  boatmen  had  refused 
to  take  them  out  to  the  fleet.  Those  boatmen  had 
families  of  their  own,  and  they  knew  that  if  all  the 
Europeans  left,  the  Italians  would  have  no  com- 
punction in  smashing  the  town  to  powder,  with 
everybody  in  it.  They  also  suspected  that  the 
Consuls  would  not  be  so  very  particular  about 
whether  the  town  was  bombarded  or  not,  if  there 
were  no  foreigners  left  in  it  to  be  injured  by  the 
bombardment. 

The  Turkish  plan  was  therefore  a  good  one,  but  a 
most  desperate  one.  It  was  worthy  of  the  Turk  ! 
They  preferred  to  die  in  the  Tripolitan  metropolis,  to 
die  bravely  with  arms  in  their  hands,  rather  than 


HOW    THE    TURKS    LEFT    TRIPOLI      97 

starve  gradually,  like  stray  mules,  out  in  the  waterless 
steppes. 

The  two  Consuls  found  it  very  hard  to  shake  the 
Turkish  officers  in  their  resolve.  They  dwelt  again  and 
again  on  the  inevitable  loss  of  innocent  life,  on  the 
certain  destruction  of  the  women  and  children.  In 
the  name  of  humanity,  they  urged  the  Osmanli 
leaders  to  abandon  their  insane,  their  desperate 
project. 

"  Humanity  !  "  commented  a  Turkish  officer  bit- 
terly. "  You  are  fond  of  using  the  word  humanity 
when  you  wish  to  save  Christian  life.  You  never 
mention  it  when  Turkish  lives  are  in  peril." 

Munir  Pasha  had  been  much  impressed,  however, 
by  the  insinuation  that  he  was  sheltering  himself 
behind  women  and  children  ;  and  finally  he  gave 
way,  and  induced  his  companions  to  do  the  same. 
There  were  bitter  tears  in  the  eyes  of  some.  One  of 
them,  Reschid  Effendi,  said  :  "  We  shall  leave  after 
a  few  shots  from  the  batteries,  after  little  more  than 
a  formal  protest  against  the  Italian  landing.  But 
we  know,"  he  bitterly  added,  "  that  the  Italians 
will  misrepresent  our  action  and  impute  it  to  cowar- 
dice." 

As  I  have  already  shown,  this  is  exactly  what  the 
chivalrous  Italians  have  done. 

When  I  heard  this  story  I  thought  of  the  young 
Italian  officer  at  Bumeliana,  the  officer  who  had  dis- 
missed the  Turks  with  a  contemptuous  wave  of  his 
hand  and  said  that  they  had  run  away  like  madmen 
on  hearing  the  roar  of  the  Italian  guns. 

Having  now  regarded  with  amazement  and  con- 
tempt for  the  last  six  months  the  almost  incredible 
timidity  and  incapacity  of  the  enemy.  Colonel 
Nesciat   Bey   and   his    friends   are    more   than   ever 

H 


98  ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

convinced  that  they  made  a  mistake  in  yielding  to 
Consular  entreaties  and  leaving  Tripoli  without  strik- 
ing a  blow.  But  like  Ottoman  gentlemen  of  the  best 
type,  they  throw  no  blame  on  the  Consuls,  and  have 
consistently  refrained  from  saying  a  word  about  that 
midnight  conference  just  before  the  bombardment. 
The  Italians,  on  the  other  hand,  have  described  their 
"  conquest  "  of  Tripoli  in  the  wildest  strain  of  boast- 
fulness.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  they  took  Tripoli  and 
most  of  the  other  places  which  they  have  occupied 
on  the  coast,  not  because  the  Turks  could  not  hold 
them,  but  because  the  Turks  did  not  want  to  expose 
the  Christian  populations  of  those  places  to  bombard- 
ment. 


CHAPTER    VIII 

BEFORE  THE   ARMY   CAME 

"  What  the  Italian  navy  did  in  Tripoli  from  October 
5th  to  October  11th,"  says  Signor  Bevione,  "  has  no 
precedent  in  history,  and  should  fill  us  with  pride. 
It  disembarked  seventeen  hundred  men  in  a  city 
which  had  in  its  barracks,  a  week  before,  four  thou- 
sand soldiers,  a  city  armed  with  rifles  and  ammuni- 
tion landed  from  the  Derna,  a  Mussulman  city  whose 
sentiments  towards  us  were  not  precisely  known  and 
which  might,  out  of  veneration  for  the  Khalifa  and 
out  of  hate  for  the  Infidel,  have  sided  with  the  Turks 
and  begun  a  Holy  War.  It  landed,  it  occupied  and 
pacified  the  city. 

"  Now  that  all  this  is  past  history,  and  that  all 
has  ended  happily,  it  must  be  said,  however,  that 
the  navy  attempted  a  diabolically  audacious  stroke, 
but  attempted  it  with  such  superb  aplomb  that  all 
the  probabilities  were  for  success.  It  was  a  gigantic 
bluff." 

But  it  was  also  a  gigantic  folly.  It  exposed  the 
peaceful  inhabitants  of  Tripoli  to  terrible  things.  If, 
only  a  fortnight  later,  the  Turks  broke  the  Italian 
line  twice,  forced  Caneva  and  his  twenty  thousand 
to  retreat  despite  their  trenches,  their  bomb-proofs, 
their  artillery,  their  barbed  wire  and  their  aero- 
planes, and  spread  panic  among  the  Italian  soldiers, 
what  earthly  chance  would  Cagni  and  his  seventeen 

99 


100        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

hundred  have  had,  were  the  Turks  to  attack  before 
the  expedition  landed  ? 

The  ItaHan  poHcy  throughout  all  this  campaign 
has  been  a  mixture  of  excessive  fool-hardiness  and 
excessive  caution.  There  has  never  been  any  medium. 
Now,  this  occupation  of  the  town  by  a  handful  of 
marines  was  a  case  of  excessive  fool-hardiness.  The 
weakest  spot  in  all  the  line,  the  oasis,  was  not  guarded 
at  all.  I  landed  soon  after  the  bombardment,  and 
went  into  the  oasis  the  same  night  with  two  English 
colleagues,  Mr.  Percival  Phillips  and  Mr.  Thomas  E. 
Grant.  We  walked  eastward  till  we  were  tired,  but 
found  no  Italian  guards  between  us  and  the  Turks. 
We  reached  the  spot  where  the  Bersaglieri  were 
afterwards  cut  to  pieces.  It  seemed  foredoomed  to 
be  the  scene  of  some  great  disaster.  The  dogs  were 
barking  in  the  profundity  of  the  oasis.  The  vivid 
white  flash  of  the  naval  search-lights  made  the  palm 
trees  throw  jet-black  shadows.  There  was  a  deep 
impression  of  solitude. 

As  it  seemed  dangerous  to  go  any  further,  we  re- 
traced our  steps  and  went  towards  Bumeliana,  the 
famous  well  which  furnishes  Tripoli  with  water,  and 
which  is  situated  on  the  border  of  the  desert,  three 
kilometres  from  the  city,  on  the  great  Gharian  road. 
At  a  gendarmerie  guard-house,  still  occupied  by 
armed  Turkish  zaptie  or  policemen  whose  services 
the  invaders  had  foolishly  accepted,  we  had  our  first 
experience  of  that  liability  to  panic  on  the  part  of 
the  Italians  which  afterwards  led  to  such  terrible 
excesses  in  this  very  oasis.  We  were  walking  in  the 
shadow  of  the  guard-house,  and  in  front  of  us  was  an 
open  square  all  flooded  with  moonlight.  All  around 
were  latticed  Turkish  houses,  silent  as  tombs. 
Suddenly,  from  the  darkness  beyond,  in  the  direction 


BEFORE  THE  ARMY  CAME     101 

of  Bumeliana,  rushed  a  group  of  Italian  civilians 
armed  to  the  teeth,  but  in  the  most  abject  state  of 
terror.  One  of  them  had  a  military  rifle,  and  as  he 
had  his  finger  on  the  trigger  and  kept  the  weapon 
pointed  our  way  I  must  admit  that  I  was  seriously 
alarmed.  All  the  others  had  revolvers  which  they 
flourished  over  their  heads,  their  fingers  also  on  the 
triggers.  Some  special  Providence  (or  perhaps  it 
was  the  sight  of  Mr.  Phillips'  typical  American  outfit) 
saved  all  three  of  us  from  being  shot  as  we  suddenly 
emerged  out  of  the  shadow  into  the  moonlight  and 
confronted  this  terror-stricken  gang. 

After  much  laborious  effort  we  managed  to  calm 
them,  and  then  they  explained  to  us  that  they  had 
been  out  in  the  oasis  and  had  seen  scores  of  Turkish 
soldiers  creeping  along  amid  the  palm  trees. 

Their  story  may  have  been  true  or  it  may  not.  I 
must  say,  however,  that  many  people  assured  me  at 
this  time  that  groups  of  Turkish  soldiers  did  enter 
the  oasis  every  night  far  in  the  rear  of  the  Italians. 
I  suppose  they  made  little  purchases  of  coffee  and 
tobacco,  visited  friends,  had  tea  with  them,  learned 
the  latest  news,  and  then  went  out  into  the  desert 
again. 

What  I  do  know  to  be  true  is  that  at  the  dangerous 
point  in  the  oasis  which  I  first  visited  there  was  not 
even  a  sentinel.  Now,  as  I  shall  show  later,  a  great 
number  of  Arabs  managed  to  slip  through  the  Italian 
lines  at  this  part  of  the  oasis  on  October  22nd,  when 
there  was  a  large  number  of  soldiers  there.  Could 
they  not  have  slipped  past  still  more  easily  when 
there  were  no  soldiers  ?  And  if  they  had  slipped 
past,  entered  the  town,  and  taken  in  the  rear  the 
handful  of  sleepy  and  exhausted  bluejackets,  who 
were  supposed  to  be  "  holding  "  Bumeliana,  what 


102        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR   A  DESERT 

resistance  could  those  bluejackets  have  offered  ? 
And  what  would  have  been  the  fate  of  the  city  ? 
The  Turkish  commander  could  not  have  restrained 
his  wild  Arab  levies  from  murdering,  plundering, 
and  burning,  and  the  fleet  would  have  probably 
added  to  the  horrors  of  the  scene  by  doing  what  an 
Italian  field  battery  actually  did  on  the  26th — shell- 
ing friend  and  foe  alike. 

The  Italians  themselves  did  not  realise  the  full 
seriousness  of  the  situation,  but  the  foreign  merchants 
in  town  did.  Early  in  October  I  spoke  to  some  of 
the  most  responsible  of  them  on  this  subject,  and 
they  made  no  secret  of  their  conviction  that  the 
Italians  were  acting  like  madmen. 

"  Were  Ibrahim  Pasha  now  in  command  of  the 
Turks,"  said  a  local  banker  to  me,  "  the  town 
would  have  been  blazing  over  our  heads  last 
night  and  not  one  of  the  bluejackets  at  Bumeliana 
would  ever  again  sail  upon  the  sea." 

He  was  referring  to  Ibrahim  Pasha,  the  strong  and 
capable  Vali  whose  recall  the  Italian  Consul  had 
brought  about  a  short  time  previous  (so  that  the 
command  of  the  Turkish  forces  should  be,  as  it  was, 
in  the  very  feeble  hands  of  old  Munir  Pasha,  when  the 
coup  was  made). 

The  Italians  landed  when  they  did,  long  before 
the  expedition  was  ready,  because  there  is  jealousy 
between  the  army  and  the  navy,  and  the  latter  wished 
to  win  all  the  laurels.  But  the  army  soon  had  its 
revenge.  Captain  Cagni  discovered,  too  late,  that 
he  had  done  a  foolish  thing.  His  bluejackets  knew 
as  little  about  scouting  and  other  details  of  land  war- 
fare as  a  camel  knows  about  the  Higher  Criticism. 
The  sailors  had  no  time  for  sleep,  and  the  night  attacks 


y 


'1 


BEFORE  THE  ARMY  CAME     103 

of  the  Turks,  futile  and  unsystematic  as  they  were, 
worried  them  beyond  endurance.  When  relieved  by 
the  troops,  some  of  them  had  had  no  sleep  for  three 
days  and  were  hardly  able  to  walk  through  fatigue. 
All  of  them  were  very  close  to  the  breaking-point, 
and  no  one  realised  better  than  Commandant  Cagni 
that  if  the  Turks  had  conducted  their  attacks  with  any 
system  or  advanced  in  earnest,  he  would  have  had  to 
retreat  to  his  ships. 

On  October  8th,  Admiral  Faravelli  wired  to  Rome 
representing  how  desperate  his  situation  was  and 
asking  that  troops  should  be  sent  at  once.  "  Do  not 
wait,"  he  implored,  "  till  the  whole  expedition  is 
ready.  Send  even  a  few  regiments."  Meanwhile 
he  himself  despatched  a  cruiser  northward  under  full 
steam  in  order  to  hurry  up  any  transports  that  might 
be  lying  in  the  Sicilian  ports  or  lagging  on  the  way. 
At  the  same  time  two  swift  ocean  liners  were  imme- 
diately despatched  from  Naples  with  troops,  which 
were  disembarked  on  the  morning  of  the  11th  and 
at  once  hurried  to  the  front.  On  October  12th,  the 
rest  of  the  Armada  appeared  and  the  danger  ceased 
to  be  acute. 

Then,  and  not  till  then,  did  the  Italians  admit 
the  recklessness  of  their  proceedings.  Admit  it  ? 
Nay,  they  gloried  in  it.  But  all  this  had  its  effect 
on  the  Turks  and  Arabs  later,  and  that  effect  was  not 
to  the  advantage  of  the  "  Army  of  Occupation." 

While  the  danger  lasted,  no  news  of  it  was,  of 
course,  permitted  to  leave  the  country,  for  on  what- 
ever matters  the  Italians  have  shown  laxity  and 
carelessness,  they  have  always  been  very  careful 
about  the  Press,  the  telegraphs,  and  even  the  post 
office.  The  Italian  commanders  became  desperately 
afraid  that   any   tidings   regarding   their    condition 


104        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR  A   DESERT 

should  reach  the  Turks  through  Press  cablegrams 
from  Tripoli  published  in  the  European  newspapers, 
transmitted  to  Constantinople,  and  thence  forwarded 
via  Tunisia  to  the  Turkish  commander  in  the  Tri- 
politan  hinterland.  An  order  consequently  went 
forth  to  the  effect  that  all  telegrams,  Press  or  private, 
must  go  to  Rome  for  a  second  dose  of  censorship. 
This  meant,  of  course,  that  they  would  be  "  held  up  " 
indefinitely,  that  they  would  reach  their  destination 
some  time  after  the  end  of  the  war.  But  as  several 
patient  and  optimistic  correspondents  continued  to 
correspond,  even  under  these  circumstances,  the 
telegraph  line  was  entirely  taken  over  by  the  Italian 
authorities,  under  the  pretext  that  it  was  wanted 
for  official  business.  Even  commerical  houses  were 
not  allowed  to  wire  about  anything  in  code  or  in  plain 
language,  lest  they  should  convey  circuitously  to  the 
Turkish  leader  in  the  interior  the  news  of  the  desperate 
position  in  which  the  Italian  landing-party  found 
itself. 

On  the  first  night  after  the  landing  the  Italians 
contented  themselves  with  guarding  the  old  walls 
of  the  town,  but  next  day  they  found  it  necessary  to 
extend  their  line  to  Bumeliana,  owing  to  the  fact 
that  at  Bumeliana  was  the  well  from  which  the  town 
was  supplied  with  drinking-water.  To  prevent  the 
Turks  from  cutting  the  water-supply  and  causing  a 
water-famine  in  Tripoli  the  bluejackets  had  to  be 
sent  to  garrison  Bumeliana. 

And  now  we  come  to  the  mistakes  of  the  Turks. 
During  this  critical  period  their  attacks  were  always 
directed  against  Bumeliana.  It  is  hard  to  explain 
why  they  did  not  attack  through  the  oasis  as  they  did, 
so  successfully,  later. 

Probably  the  reasons  are  as  follows.     They  had 


BEFORE  THE  ARMY  CAME     105 

not  at  this  time  many  Arabs  with  them.  They  did 
not  know  what  poor  soldiers  the  ItaHans  are.  They 
attributed  to  the  Itahan  leaders  far  greater  military 
skill  than  those  gentlemen  actually  possessed  ;  in 
other  words,  they  feared  that  some  trap  would  be 
sprung  on  them  if  they  attacked  under  cover  and  not 
out  in  the  open  desert  where  they  could  see  for  many 
miles  on  every  side  of  them.  They  also  attributed 
too  much  importance  to  the  fire  of  the  battleships 
lying  off  Sharashett.  They  feared  that  if  they 
attacked  via  Sharashett  the  Sicilia  would  blow  them 
to  smithereens.  Perhaps  they  also  feared  that  landing- 
parties  from  the  ships,  acting  in  conjunction  with  the 
Bumeliana  detachment,  would  cut  off  their  retreat 
if  they  attacked  Sharashett,  or  would  catch  them 
between  Sharashett  and  the  sea.  And  it  would  not 
be  difficult  for  an  efficient  invader  to  do  so,  as,  east 
of  Sharashett,  there  are  marshes  which  might  con- 
stitute disastrous  impediments  in  the  retreat  of  a 
Turkish  force  which  had  been  beaten  back  in  an  attack 
on  the  city. 

On  the  other  hand,  Bumeliana,  being  almost  due 
south,  was  further  removed  from  the  action  of  the 
Italian  fleet  than  any  other  part  of  the  Italian  line. 
Besides,  being  open  desert,  it  gave  the  invaders  less 
opportunity  to  cut  off  the  Turks  when  they  ap- 
proached. 

It  is  easy,  of  course,  to  be  wise  after  the  event, 
but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  Turks  lost  a  great 
chance  at  this  time  by  keeping  pegging  away  night 
after  night  at  Bumeliana  when,  by  turning  the  Italian 
flank  through  the  oasis,  they  might  easily  have  cap- 
tured all  Commander  Cagni's  garrison  and  inflicted 
on  the  Italians  a  blow  from  which  they  would 
never  have   recovered.     The    reason    why    Nesciat 


106        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR  A   DESERT 

Bey  did  not  take  advantage  of  this  unequalled 
opportunity  is  probably  this.  He  had  not  yet  suc- 
ceeded in  rousing  the  Arabs.  Orientals  are  notori- 
ously apathetic  and  slow,  and  it  was  a  week  at  least 
before  the  Turkish  commander  was  able  to  convince 
the  Arab  chiefs  that  the  Italians  were  in  the  country 
and  intended  to  stay  there.  This  also  accounts  for 
his  failure  to  make  any  considerable  number  of  the 
Arabs  rally  round  him  before  the  bombardment. 
They  had  seen  those  naval  demonstrations  of  the 
Italians  before  and  knew  that  nothing  had  ever  come 
of  them.  They  believed  that  this  one  would  be  like 
the  others.  Moreover,  Nesciat  Bey  himself  was  badly 
served  by  Constantinople.  Without  instructions 
from  the  Sublime  Porte,  he  could  not  arm  the  natives 
on  October  2nd,  and  the  telegrams  from  his  Govern- 
ment were  very  much  delayed.  The  cable  announcing 
that  war  was  declared  and  giving  him  a  free  hand 
arrived  only  six  hours  before  the  bombardment. 

I  shall  not  say  that  the  Turks  made  a  mistake  in 
not  arranging  that  the  outer  attack  and  the  revolt 
in  the  town  on  October  23rd  should  both  take  pluce 
at  night  and  at  the  same  moment.  For,  as  I  shall 
show  later,  there  was  no  revolt  in  the  town,  though 
there  was  a  panic  there.  But  I  think  Nesciat  Bey 
should  have  provoked  a  panic  on  a  very  large  scale 
in  Tripoli  city,  say,  at  midnight  on  October  22nd, 
and  should  have  at  the  same  instant  attacked  Shara- 
shett.  If  the  Turkish  leader  had  been  really  bent  on 
making  Tripoli  city  quake,  he  had  all  the  materials 
for  doing  so  ready  to  his  hand.  He  had  scores  of 
Arab  fanatics  who  were  positively  clamouring  for 
a  chance  of  throwing  away  their  lives  on  some 
desperate  venture.  Nesciat  Bey  might  have  sent 
some  of  these  men  to  fire  shots  into  the  powder- 


BEFORE  THE  ARMY  CAME     107 

magazines,  others  to  set  fire  to  the  city  in  a  hundred 
different  places,  others  to  entrench  themselves  with 
good  Mausers  and  plenty  of  ammunition  in  corner- 
houses,  and  thus  convert  every  narrow  lane  into  an 
Oriental  Sidney  Street.    But  I  am  anticipating. 

I  have  blamed  Nesciat  Bey  for  his  persistency  in 
attacking  only  Bumeliana.  On  the  other  hand,  this 
very  persistency  led,  in  turn,  to  the  Italians  com- 
mitting the  blunder  of  devoting  all  their  attention 
to  Bumeliana  and  practically  leaving  the  oasis  line 
to  take  care  of  itself.  General  Caneva  had  evidently 
set  it  down  as  an  axiom  that,  owing  to  the  presence 
of  the  cruisers  at  the  extremities  of  his  right  and  left 
flanks,  the  Turks  would  never  attack  those  flanks, 
but  would  confine  themselves  to  an  attempt  to  carry 
Bumeliana  by  a  coup  de  main.  He  reckoned  without 
the  incredible  fearlessness  of  the  Arab,  who  is  not 
scared  even  by  the  aeroplane,  and  whose  contempt 
for  the  battleship  is  so  great  that  he  actually  attacks 
it  with  his  rifle  !  At  Azilat  the  Arab  villagers,  poor 
devils  !  rushed  up  to  their  waists  in  the  sea  to  get 
a  nearer  shot  at  an  Italian  man-o'-war  which  was 
shelling  that  unprotected  little  village.  And  towards 
the  end  of  November  there  was  quite  a  fusillade  from 
beyond  Fort  Hamidie  at  the  Dardo,  the  Partenope, 
and  the  Carlo  Alberto.  The  search-light  of  the  latter 
vessel  was  smashed  by  a  rifle-ball,  a  gunner  on  the 
same  vessel  was  wounded,  and  a  bullet  passed  through 
the  clothes  of  the  captain  of  the  corvette  Cacace. 
And,  as  we  shall  soon  see,  it  was  exactly  on  their 
extreme  left,  where  they  thought  themselves  most 
secure,  that  the  Italians  were  first  to  learn  the  meaning 
of  that  phrase  which  had  not  at  Sharashett  quite 
the  same  flippant  meaning  which  is  sometimes  at- 
tached to  it  at  St   Stephen's — a  rush  of  Dervishes. 


108         ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

On  October  12th,  therefore,  the  situation  was 
saved  and  the  whole  Itahan  Press  gave  one  great 
sigh  of  relief.  With  the  landing  of  the  Bersaglieri, 
wired  Luigi  Barzini,  "  the  most  critical  period  of 
the  occupation  of  Tripoli  must  be  regarded  as  at  an 
end.  For  seven  days  and  seven  most  long  nights 
{sette  giorni  e  seiie  lunghissime  notti)  eighteen  hundred 
marines  audaciously  held  the  city.  .  .  .  Those  days 
of  glory  and  of  anxiety  are  passed." 

At  Bumeliana,  during  those  days  of  glory,  there 
were  only  two  companies  of  bluejackets,  one  company 
from  the  Brin  under  Captain  Bonelli,  one  from  the 
Sardegna  under  First-lieutenant  Pertusio — two  hun- 
dred men  in  all.  There  was  an  attack  on  Bumeliana 
the  night  after  I  landed,  and  all  the  newspaper  men 
in  the  city  were  there  or  at  some  other  part  of  the 
front.  The  non-Italians  who  were  present  could 
hardly  persuade  themselves  that  the  proceedings  at 
which  they  were  assisting  constituted  real  war,  and 
not  comic  opera  or  some  Christmas  pantomime  of 
an  excruciatingly  funny  sort. 

Here  was  an  invading  army  supposed  to  be  in 
possession  of  a  city,  yet  with  the  enemy  turning  up 
punctually  every  night  at  10.30,  and  spitting  on 
them,  so  to  speak,  as  they  lay  hidden  behind  a  little 
mud- wall,  afraid  to  look  over  it  (I  speak  of  the  common 
seamen)  lest  they  should  see  something  dreadful. 

Five  Italian  journalists  were  up  a  tree,  which 
palpitated  visibly  with  their  anxiety.  Something 
dark,  dread,  and  menacing  advanced  out  of  the  desert. 
The  bluejackets  blazed  away  at  it  for  all  they  were 
worth,  but  as  they  were  afraid  to  look  over  the  wall 
and  take  aim,  their  shots  went  far  too  high.  Finally, 
with  shambling  tread  a  superannuated  donkey  made 
its  appearance,  solemn  and  uninjured.     It  had  prob- 


BEFORE  THE  ARMY  CAME     109 

ably  been  left  behind  by  the  Turks,  and  some  in- 
stinct had  guided  it  back  over  the  sand  to  the  oasis. 
It  began  to  nibble  hungrily  at  the  grass,  the 
bluejackets  meanwhile  watching  it  with  obvious 
suspicion.  They  were  not  sure  about  the  brute  at 
all. 

The  next  fright  came  in  the  shape  of  a  dismal 
moaning  and  wailing  at  the  rear.  The  voice  was 
that  of  an  old  native  woman.  "  Surely  to  heavens," 
said  an  Irish  spectator  to  himself,  "  surely  to  heavens 
she  cannot  be  a  banshee — seeing  that  she  wails  and 
laments  in  Arabic."  A  diligent  search  led  to  the 
discovery  that  the  old  woman  was  not  a  banshee,  but 
merely  a  resident  of  a  lazarette  for  the  famine- 
stricken  which  the  Turks  had  established  at  Bume- 
liana.  She  had  come  outside  and  was  sitting  on  the 
ground.  Probably  she  had  not  had  anything  to  eat 
since  the  Turks  left. 

Another  pause,  and  at  length  the  officers  declared 
that  they  could  see  something  which  looked  like  a 
dense  mass  of  men  on  the  edge  of  a  sand-hill.  And, 
sure  enough,  there  was  a  sudden  dot  of  flame  away 
out  in  the  waste,  a  shot  rang  out,  and  a  bullet  whistled 
through  the  fronds  of  a  palm  tree  overhead. 

Immediately  there  was  dreadful  confusion. 
Rockets  went  up  asking  the  fleet  to  help.  The 
Filiberto  and  the  Sardegna  bombarded  the  desert 
with  every  variety  of  shell  they  had  on  board 
— shrapnel,  percussion  shell,  twelve-inch,  and  all  the 
others.  The  uproar  continued  for  half  -  an  -  hour. 
The  search-lights  of  the  Sardegna  swept  the  desert, 
but  no  enemy  was  to  be  seen.  Some  officers  with 
their  ears  to  the  ground  declared  that  they  could 
hear  the  distant  galloping  of  cavalry. 

Meanwhile  reinforcements  were  sent   for.     Those 


110        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

reinforcements  numbered  exactly  one  hundred 
marines  and  that  one  hundred  constituted  the  entire 
reserve  in  the  town. 

"  Ma  che  importa  ?  "  says  an  Itahan,  who  probably 
felt  some  excuse  to  be  due  for  the  appalling  paucity 
of  the  reserves.  "  /  nostri  uomini  si  sentono  capaci 
di  qualunque  audacia."  ("  What  does  it  matter  ? 
Our  men  feel  themselves  equal  to  any  audacity.") 

[Very  true,  my  excited  journalistic  friend,  but  you 
must  remember  that  this  is  not  a  huge  joke  which  you 
are  perpetrating.  You  are  responsible  not  only  for  the 
lives  of  your  sailors  ashore,  but  also  for  the  lives  of 
some  forty  thousand  peaceful  people,  most  of  them 
women  and  children.  If  you  have  come  here  only 
in  order  to  overturn  the  Government  which  has  kept 
some  sort  of  order  and  then  to  run  out  again,  leaving 
the  place  in  a  state  of  chaos,  I  do  think  that  you 
might  have  postponed  your  visit  until  you  were  ready 
to  come  with  a  sufficiently  strong  force.] 

In  the  morning  four  Turks  were  found  lying  in  the 
desert.  Three  were  dead,  one  wounded.  They  had 
all  been  struck  down  by  rifle-bullets,  so  that  the 
terrific  bombardment  by  the  ships  had  been  entirely 
useless.  The  donkey  was  also  dead,  but  as  it  was  not 
considered  necessary  to  hold  a  post-mortem,  it  will 
never  perhaps  be  known  whether  it  was  killed  by  a 
stray  Turkish  bullet  or  assassinated  by  some  of  the 
sailors. 

Next  day  the  Italian  correspondents  spent  hun- 
dreds of  pounds  cabling  home  word-pictures  of  this 
sanguinary  engagement.  Signor  Barzini  called  it 
"  our  baptism  of  fire."  The  number  of  the  Turks 
was  given  at  various  figures  from  five  hundred  to 
five  thousand.  I  cannot  say  what  number  is  right, 
but  Mr.  Reginald  Kahn,  a  well-known  French  war- 


BEFORE  THE  ARMY  CAME     111 

correspondent,  assures  me  that  the  number  was — 
fifteen  ! 

I  have  already  pointed  out  that  the  ItaHans  took 
the  whole  adventure  pretty  lightly.  They  said  that 
the  Turks  were  in  desperate  want  of  drinking- 
water,  and  that  it  was  the  pangs  of  thirst  which  had 
forced  them  to  attack  the  Bumeliana  well.  Mr. 
Barzini  wired  to  the  "  Corriere  della  Sera  "  a  cordial 
invitation  to  the  Turks  to  come  in  with  a  white  flag, 
assuring  them  at  the  same  time  that  Commander 
Cagni  would  let  them  have  as  much  water  and  as 
much  food  as  they  wished  for. 

It  was  apparently  a  generous  offer,  but,  if  accepted, 
it  would  probably  have  been  followed  by  an  act  of 
treachery  on  the  part  of  the  Italians.  For  never 
has  one  army  behaved  so  scurvily  towards  a  brave 
enemy  as  the  Italian  army  has  behaved  towards  the 
Turks  in  Tripoli.  On  October  18th,  a  Turkish  doctor 
with  a  Red  Crescent  Badge  on  his  arm  presented 
himself  at  Bumeliana  under  a  flag  of  truce  and  begged 
for  some  lint  and  antiseptics  for  the  wounded.  He 
was  immediately  arrested,  carried  in  great  triumph 
through  the  city,  and  finally  conducted  to  the  General 
Staff,  where  he  was  questioned  for  hours  about  the 
state  of  the  Turkish  army,  the  positions  which  they 
occupied  and  the  attitude  of  the  Arabs. 

Then  he  was  sent,  still  under  arrest,  to  the  Hotel 
Minerva,  in  order  that  he  might  be  further  "  pumped  " 
by  the  Italian  journalists  resident  there.  But  he 
certainly  hoodwinked  those  correspondents  badly, 
for  he  persuaded  them  that  the  Turks  lacked  food, 
could  not  obtain  ammunition,  and  had  failed  to 
find  any  Arab  allies  owing  to  the  scarcity  of  the  date 
crop  the  previous  year.  This,  it  will  be  remembered, 
was  four  days  before  the  great  Turko-Arab  attack 


112        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A  DESERT 

of  October  23rd.  This  doctor  was  afterwards  sent 
as  a  prisoner  to  Syracuse.  In  almost  every  case 
subsequently  in  which  the  Arabs  tried  to  communi- 
cate with  General  Caneva  under  cover  of  a  flag  of 
truce,  the  Italians  indignantly  arrested  the  messenger 
and  sent  him  as  a  prisoner  of  war  to  Syracuse.  The 
only  occasion  on  which  a  Turkish  messenger  escaped 
was  on  the  morning  of  the  26th,  when  an  Ottoman 
officer  rode  in  and  asked  Colonel  Fara  to  deliver  up 
the  city  within  twenty-four  hours.  The  Colonel  was 
so  aghast  at  the  proposition  that  the  man  escaped. 

General  Caneva  is  reported  to  have  said  :  "  These 
are  only  brigands.  I  cannot  respect  their  white 
flags."  On  this  principle  he  consistently  acted.  It 
was  an  insult,  in  his  opinion,  for  any  Turk  to  regard 
himself  as  entitled  to  treat  on  equal  terms  with 
Lieutenant-General  Carlo  Caneva,  Governor  of  Tripoli 
and  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  Italian  Army  of 
Occupation.  His  attitude  in  this  respect  reminded 
me  of  that  of  my  friend  Colonel  Artemieff,  the  editor 
of  the  official  "  Novi  Krai  "  in  Port  Arthur,  on  the 
eve  of  the  Russo-Japanese  War. 

When  asked  by  Renter's  correspondent  in  my 
presence  if  it  was  true  that  Japan  had  sent  an  ulti- 
matum, the  Colonel  swelled  visibly,  drew  himself 
up,  and  replied  that  so  great  an  Empire  as  Russia 
could  not  receive  an  ultimatum  from  a  little  nation 
like  Japan.  If  Japan  did  send  what  she  regarded  as 
an  ultimatum,  well,  Russia  would  simply  smile,  and 
say  :  "  Take  it  away  now,  and  be  sensible."  In 
Colonel  Artemieff's  opinion  the  case  was  very  much 
like  that  of  an  elephant  being  attacked  by  an  angry 
frog.  There  could  not,  in  the  nature  of  things,  be 
a  contest.    It  was  out  of  the  question. 

General  Caneva  consequently  felt  himself  entitled 


BEFORE  THE  ARMY  CAME     113 

to  disregard  all  the  rules  of  war,  and  to  shoot  all 
prisoners  taken,  whether  Turkish  or  Arabic.  Signor 
G.  De  Felice  Giuffrida  tells  in  the  "  Secolo  "  (October 
31st)  how,  after  the  battle  of  the  26th,  he  saw  a 
Turkish  soldier  {un  soldato  turco)  lying  bound  in 
a  hole  in  the  ground.  "  He  is  awaiting  perhaps  his 
last  hour,"  remarked  the  Italian  lightly,  and  passed 
on. 

The  whole  quotation  is  as  follows  : 

"  In  una  buca  profonda  trovasi  un  soldato 
turco  prigioniero,  legato,  impossibilitato  a  scap- 
pare.  Attende  forse  la  sua  ultima  ora  con  quella 
rassegnazione  fanatica  rasentante  la  incoscienza, 
che  spinge  le  turbe  arabe  nel  fanatismo  contro  gli 
infedeli." 

Now,  why  should  Signor  Giuffrida  expect  this 
Turkish  soldier  to  be  butchered  unless  it  was  the  rule 
with  the  Italians  to  butcher  all  the  prisoners  whom 
they  made,  whether  they  were  Turkish  prisoners  in 
uniform  or  Arab  prisoners  in  native  dress,  whether 
they  had  been  captured  in  the  oasis  or  out  in  the 
desert,  whether  they  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of 
the  enemy  through  lack  of  ammunition  or  through 
fatigue  induced  by  over-exertion  or  by  loss  of  blood  ? 

In  Gharian  there  w^ere  at  the  end  of  last  year  five 
Italian  soldiers  who  had  been  captured  in  November 
during  a  disastrous  attempt  (of  which  the  Italians 
took  good  care,  by  the  way,  not  to  let  the  world 
know  anything)  made  by  the  93rd  Regiment  to  land 
east  of  Tripoli.  These  men  are  well  fed  and  well 
treated.  They  are  allowed  to  write  to  their  friends 
in  Italy,  and  even  to  wire  to  them  at  the  expense 
of  the  Ottoman  Administration.  Nearly  one  hundred 
Italian   prisoners   had    previously   been    despatched 


114        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

under  escort  to  Fezzan,  which  is  still  further  south ; 
and  many  more  captures  have  probably  been  made 
since. 

So  much  for  the  manner  in  which  the  unmention- 
able Turk  treats  his  captives.  We  have  already  seen 
the  manner  in  which  civilised  Italy  treats  hers.  At 
Syracuse  and  in  various  parts  of  Sicily  she  has  many 
Turkish  prisoners,  but  not  one  of  them  was  taken  in 
battle.  They  are  all  included  in  the  following  cate- 
gories :  (1)  Arrested  in  Turkish  merchant  steamers 
at  sea  ;  (2)  soldiers  who  had  been  left  behind  sick  in 
the  hospital  at  Tripoli,  but  whom  the  Italians  de- 
clared to  be  shamming  and  arrested  ;  (3)  messengers 
who  came  in  under  a  flag  of  truce,  but  who  were  im- 
mediately seized  and  bound  at  the  instance  of  General 
Caneva,  who  refused  to  treat  the  enemy  as  regular 
combatants  and  insisted  on  regarding  them  as 
burglars. 

The  Turks  and  Arabs  have  been  consistently 
treated  in  this  war  as  brave  men  caught  at  a  dis- 
advantage are  generally  treated  by  cowards,  as  a 
brave  Goth  or  Celt  made  prisoner  by  some  act  of 
treachery  would  be  treated  by  the  last  decadent 
Potentates  of  Imperial  Rome.  Shortly  after  the 
Italians  landed,  all  the  Turkish  soldiers  in  the  hospitals 
were  made  prisoners,  placed  on  board  a  vessel,  and 
sent  to  Italy,  where,  doubtless,  they  were  afterwards 
paraded  in  public  as  men  who  had  been  captured 
in  battle.  An  Austrian  correspondent  happened  to 
be  on  the  same  vessel  (see  Hermann  Wendel's 
"  Tripoli-Raub  und  Weltkrieg  "),  and  he  tells  what 
was  done  to  them  : 

"  Every  evening,  at  six  o'clock,  all  the  prisoners 
were  put  in  irons.     Each  of  these  sick,   broken 


BEFORE  THE  ARMY  CAME    115 

soldiers  phlegmatically  held  out  his  left  arm  and 
left  leg,  which  were  chained  together.  From  six 
o'clock  in  the  evening  till  six  o'clock  next  morning 
we  heard  the  frightful  music  of  the  iron  fetters 
clanking  continuously  as  the  men  turned  in  their 
sleep." 

Suitable    music,    indeed,    for    the    "  civilisation " 
which  Italy  has  brought  to  Africa  ! 


PART  III 
THE    BATTLES 


CHAPTER    I 

THE   BATTLE   OF  SHARASHETT :   HOW  THE 
ARABS   BROKE   THE   ITALIAN   LINE 

The  fighting  around  Tripoli  city  towards  the  end 
of  last  year  was  really  all  one  long  battle,  lasting 
from  October  6th  till  December  4th,  when  the  Italians 
reached  Ain  Zara,  or,  properly  speaking,  until  the 
present  day,  for  the  invaders  are  still  besieged  in 
Tripoli.  This  battle  should  be  known  as  the  battle 
of  Tripoli.  Sharashett  and  Sidi  Messri  were  merely 
prominent  episodes  of  that  conflict,  critical  moments 
when  the  Arab  attack  was  pressed  home  with  more 
than  usual  energy  and  success. 

I  shall  confine  myself,  however,  to  a  description  of 
Sharashett  and  Sidi  Messri,  as  the  other  attacks  were 
similar,  but  more  uninteresting  and  on  a  smaller  scale. 

In  order  to  understand  these  battles  as  well  as  the 
terrible  repressive  measures  by  which  they  were 
followed,  it  is  necessary  to  realise  the  position  of 
General  Caneva's  forces  in  Tripoli  at  the  middle  of 
October.  At  that  time  the  Italian  line  was  drawn 
like  a  semicircle  round  the  landward  side  of  Tripoli 
city.  The  city  was  in  the  centre,  the  radius,  measur- 
ing from  the  old  Castello  in  which  the  Commander- 
in-chief  resided,  was  about  three  miles.  The  semicircle 
terminated  right  and  left  on  the  sea,  on  the  right  or 
west  at  Gargaresh,  on  the  left  or  east  at  Sharashett. 
To  the  south  was  Bumeliana.     Between  Bumeliana 

119 


120        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR  A  DESERT 

and  Sharashett  were  the  Cavalry  Barracks,  the 
Marabout  or  Saint's  tomb  of  Sidi  Messri,  Fort  Messri, 
and  Henni.  All  these  places  will  be  mentioned 
very  frequently  in  my  account  of  the  fighting. 

And  here  it  would  be  well  again  to  remind  the 
reader  of  the  geographical  features  of  the  district, 
since  they  are  of  great  importance  from  a  military 
point  of  view.  Tripoli  and  its  oasis  resemble  a  comet 
and  its  tail.  Tripoli  is  the  head  of  the  comet  ;  the 
tail  runs  eastward  down  the  coast  and  close  to  the 
sea  for  some  six  or  seven  miles. 

This  oasis  or  strip  of  moisture-retentive  soil  had  an 
average  depth  of  about  a  mile  and  was  one  immense 
palm  grove,  filled  not  only  with  date-palms,  but  also 
with  cacti,  fig  trees,  and  olive  trees.  All  through  the 
oasis  swarmed  the  little  flat-roofed,  mud-walled 
villages  of  the  Arabs.  Each  villager  had  his  own 
patch  of  garden,  enclosed  by  walls  of  reddish  mud, 
and  by  bewildering  labyrinths  of  cactus  hedge. 
Among  the  villages  were  Moslem  graveyards  also 
surrounded  by  mud-walls,  so  as  to  save  them  from 
the  streams  formed  during  the  torrential  rains  of 
the  winter. 

The  Italians  did  not  occupy  all  of  the  Tripoli 
oasis.  Evidently  they  did  not  consider  themselves 
strong  enough  to  do  so.  Accordingly,  from  Fort 
Messri  to  Sharashett  their  line  cut  through  the  oasis, 
and  as  the  Bersaglieri  did  not  (save  at  one  point, 
Henni,)  entrench  themselves  here,  did  not  cut  down 
the  palm  trees  and  cacti,  did  not  level  the  innumerable 
mud-walls  and  mud-cabins,  it  is  easy  to  understand 
why  the  Turko-Arab  force  delivered  its  greatest 
attacks  and  gained  its  greatest  successes  at  this  part  of 
the  line.  Along  the  Fort  Messri-Sharashett  line  the 
Italians  had  in  front  of  them  houses,  palms,  olives, 


THE    BATTLE    OF    SHARASHETT       121 

clay  walls,  and  impenetrable  thickets.  They  did  not 
clear  a  fire-zone  in  front  of  their  rifles,  so  that  when 
the  Arabs  appeared  in  this  quarter  before  dawn  on 
October  23rd  they  were  near  enough  to  shake  hands 
with  the  Bersaglieri  if  they  had  been  disposed  to  do  so. 
Save  at  Henni,  as  I  have  already  pointed  out,  there 
were  no  trenches,  no  cannon,  no  serious  defensive 
works. 

It  was  different  in  the  other  part  of  the  line,  from 
Henni  west  to  Gargaresh,  though  here  no  elaborate 
defences  were  needed,  since  the  Turks  would  have 
had  to  advance  over  the  bare  desert,  while  the 
Italians  entrenched  on  the  edge  of  the  oasis  could 
easily  shoot  them  down  without  once  exposing 
themselves  to  the  enemy's  fire.  But  all  the  way 
from  Fort  Messri  to  Gargaresh  ran  deep  trenches  in 
which  the  Italians  must  have  been  quite  invisible  to 
the  enemy.  In  front  of  these  trenches  stood,  some- 
times, loop-holed  mud-walls,  barbed  wire  fences,  and 
pits  with  spikes  at  the  bottom.  At  Gargaresh, 
Bumeliana,  and  the  Cavalry  Barracks  were  mountain 
and  field  batteries  of  the  best  kind.  Bumeliana  was 
especially  well  defended  for  two  reasons.  In  the 
first  place,  being  well  to  the  south  it  was  further 
removed  than  any  other  part  of  the  line  from  the 
protective  influence  of  the  guns  on  the  battleships. 
In  the  second  place,  up  to  this  time  the  Turks  had 
always  made  their  night  attacks  at  Bumeliana,  and 
thus  given  the  Italians  the  idea  that  they  would 
always  continue  to  attack  there  and  would  endeavour 
to  carry  this  place  by  storm. 

I  shall  now  proceed  to  describe  the  battle. 

The  battle  of  Sharashett,  on  October  23rd,  was  the 
first  serious  fight  of  the  Turko-Italian  War,  and  the 
first  conflict  in  which  the  Arabs  fought  side  by  side 


122        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

with  the  Turks,  thus  dissipating  very  rudely  all 
Italian  illusions  on  the  subject  of  an  Arab  Alliance. 
The  previous  attacks  of  the  enemy  had  been  confined 
to  one  portion  of  the  Italian  line,  namely  Bume- 
liana,  and  showed  little  military  skill  and  little 
common  sense.  On  October  23rd  the  attack  em- 
braced the  whole  Italian  line  from  the  seashore  at 
Gargaresh  to  Bumeliana,  from  Bumeliana  to  the 
Cavalry  Barracks,  from  the  Cavalry  Barracks  to  Fort 
Messri,  from  Fort  Messri  to  Henni,  from  Henni  to 
Sharashett,  on  the  sea-coast  east  of  Tripoli.  From 
Sharashett  the  battle  takes  its  name  owing  to  the  fact 
that  at  this  point  the  Italian  line  was  broken  and  the 
4th  and  5th  companies  of  the  llth  Bersaglieri  were 
almost  cut  to  pieces.  But  perhaps  the  most  striking 
feature  of  this  battle  was  the  Arab  attack  on  the  rear 
of  the  Bersaglieri  at  Sharashett. 

I  rose  early  in  the  morning  of  this  day  and  climbed 
to  the  fiat  roof  of  the  Hotel  Minerva.  The  darkness 
of  night  was  struggling  with  the  on-coming  day. 
The  stars  were  still  burning  brightly  in  the  west ;  the 
street  lamps  were  still  alight  in  the  streets  below  ; 
and  in  the  east  a  pale,  cold,  mystic  light  bathed  the 
grey,  corpse-like  face  of  the  desert.  The  unwearied 
search-lights  of  the  Sicilia  and  the  Carlo  Alberto  lit 
up  the  white  shore  of  Gargaresh,  swung  backwards 
and  forwards,  caressing  the  beach,  like  the  long  white 
tentacles  of  some  gigantic  monster  of  the  sea.  A 
strange  humming  noise  overhead  attracted  my 
attention.  It  came  from  a  monster  of  the  air,  from 
the  motor  of  Captain  Piazza's  "  Bleriot." 

Perfectly  even,  perfectly  under  control,  the  aero- 
plane glided  gracefully  aloft  like  a  gigantic  dragon-fly. 
It  was  soon  joined  by  the  "  Neuport  "  machine  of 
Captain  Moizo.    Up  to  that  time  the  wonderful  aerial 


THE    BATTLE    OF    SHARASHETT       123 

invention,  which  is  bound  to  revolutionise  war,  had 
a  bad  start  in  Tripoli.  Essentially  the  weapon  of  the 
swift  aggressor,  it  was  here  at  the  disposal  of  a 
cautious  general  who  was  in  command  of  a  timid 
army.  Moreover,  it  could  not  have  been  tried  on  a 
worse  field  of  operations,  for,  as  a  rule,  the  bombs 
discharged  from  it  bury  themselves  harmlessly  in  the 
sand.  The  Arabs  have  no  barracks  or  permanent 
works  which  can  be  injured  ;  and  as  they  now  scatter 
whenever  they  see  an  aeroplane  approaching,  practi- 
cally no  loss  is  ever  inflicted  on  them  by  the  grenades. 
The  women  and  children  in  the  villages  are  practically 
the  only  victims,  and  this  fact  excites  the  anger  of 
the  Arabs,  who  are  unaware,  of  course,  that  while 
the  Hague  Convention  frowns  on  their  occasional  use 
of  Dum-dum  bullets,  it  does  not  prohibit  the  throwing 
of  aerial  bombs  whose  jagged  pieces  cause  most 
terrible  wounds. 

In  a  European  war  the  aeroplane  would,  of  course, 
play  a  far  more  important  role.  The  movements 
of  the  enemy  could  be  watched,  while  battleships, 
powder-magazines,  forts,  and  all  kinds  of  permanent 
works  could  be  injured. 

The  Italians  imagined  that  the  aeroplanes  would 
have  on  the  Arabs  the  same  effect  as  Pizarro's 
cavalry  had  on  the  Incas,  that  mollah,  dervish,  sheikh, 
and  marabout  would  unanimously  fall  down  and 
worship.  Consequently  one  always  found  the 
intensely  self-conscious  Italians  putting  themselves 
mentally  in  the  benighted  native's  place  and  mar- 
velling at  the  power  of  the  god-like  stranger.  "  La 
commozione  degli  indigeni  e  intensa  "  (the  commotion 
among  the  natives  is  intense),  says  one  observer,  who 
also  talks  of  the  roar  of  the  multitude  "  thunder- 
struck by  the  prodigy." 


124        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR  A   DESERT 

But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Arabs  of  Tripoli,  like 
the  Moors  of  Morocco,  are  very  little  scared  by  the 
sight  of  an  aeroplane.  They  look  up  in  astonishment 
and  praise  Allah  for  all  his  wondrous  works,  but  their 
respect  for  the  European  is  not  in  the  least  heightened. 

At  first  the  Italian  aeroplanes  were  employed,  not 
in  scouting,  but  in  petrifying  the  natives  of  the  city. 
The  machines  confined  themselves  entirely  to  the 
air  directly  above  Tripoli  and  its  suburbs.  On  the 
present  occasion  I  thought  that  I  was  going  to  see 
nothing  but  the  usual  flight  over  the  tops  of  the 
houses,  but  in  this  I  was  mistaken,  for,  after  a  few 
turns  over  the  city  and  the  shipping,  the  aeroplanes 
sailed  south  towards  Bumeliana.  They  passed  Bume- 
liana,  passed  the  first  sand-dunes,  and,  after  hover- 
ing about  there  for  a  time,  flew  still  further  south 
until  they  became  mere  specks  in  the  sky.  In  less 
than  half-an-hour  they  returned  and  alighted  grace- 
fully near  the  military  hangar  outside  the  walls. 
One  would  not  have  suspected  that  they  had  had 
time  to  see  much,  but  they  reported  to  the  General 
Staff  that  they  had  seen  four  Turkish  encampments, 
the  nearest  of  them  three  miles  from  the  Italian 
outposts,  the  furthest,  five  or  six  miles.  In  the 
largest  of  the  encampments,  which  was  situated  in  a 
small  oasis  or  group  of  palm  trees  called  Agedzia, 
there  was  a  huge  tent,  evidently  that  of  a  general  or 
colonel. 

To  an  enterprising  commander,  such  information 
would  have  been  invaluable,  but,  for  all  the  use  he 
made  of  it,  General  Caneva  might  as  well  have  been 
without  aeroplanes  at  all.  He  made  no  effort  to 
attack  the  Arabs  in  detail  before  they  had  joined 
forces,  and  the  disposition  of  his  troops  remained  the 
same.      The    Italian    soldiers    were    still    standing 


THE    BATTLE    OF    SHARASHETT       125 

shoulder  to  shoulder  in  a  semicircle  south  of  the  town, 
and  no  one  portion  could  be  strengthened  to  any 
appreciable  extent  in  case  of  danger,  because  there 
were  practically  no  reserves  in  the  city. 

It  must  be  admitted,  moreover,  that  the  aeroplanes 
did  not  afterwards  keep  very  well  in  touch  with 
these  Arabs  as  cavalry  would  have  done  ;  for  in  the 
course  of  the  morning  the  bulk  of  the  enemy  seems 
to  have  worked  round  to  the  oasis  on  the  east  without 
being  perceived. 

In  any  case  the  aeroplanes  could  not  have  observed 
the  approach  of  the  Turkish  main  body  which  entered 
the  eastern  end  of  the  oasis  and  marched  in  the  shade 
of  the  palm  trees  all  the  way  to  Sharashett.  I  am 
therefore  at  a  loss  to  see  in  what  consists  the  brilliancy 
of  the  brillante  esplorazione  by  the  aeroplanes  whereof 
the  Italians  boasted  so  much  on  this  occasion.  At  all 
events  the  practical  utility  of  the  reconnaissance  is 
very  hard  to  see. 

First,  the  Turks  and  Arabs  made  demonstrations 
along  the  whole  front  of  the  Italian  line,  beginning 
at  the  western  extremity.  In  the  desert  just  south 
of  the  Sultanie  battery  and  a  few  miles  distant  from  the 
Italian  lines  is  the  oasis  of  Gurgi,  where  a  German 
subject  called  Von  Lochow  had  a  concession  and  a 
house.  The  house,  over  which  floated  the  German 
flag,  was  truculently  new  ;  and  the  more  one  looked 
at  it  the  more  was  one  surprised  to  see  such  a  fine 
modern  edifice — it  looked  like  the  bungalow  of  a 
well-to-do  Indian  planter — standing  intact  and  even 
self-satisfied  in  the  dangerous  no-man's  land  between 
two  hostile  armies.  Still  stranger  was  the  fact  that 
the  young  farming  expert,  Yon  Lochow,  continued 
to  live  in  it.  Von  Lochow  was  violently  anti-Italian. 
Before  the  bombardment  he  had  had  rows  with  Vice- 


126        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

Consul  Galli,  and  with  the  Italian  correspondents, 
and,  after  the  bombardment,  he  was  believed  to  hold 
nightly  conferences  in  his  house  with  agents  of  the 
enemy.  It  was  certainly  a  fact  that,  before  the 
Italian  occupation.  Von  Lochow  had  been  on  the 
friendliest  terms  with  the  Turkish  military  authorities. 
It  was  also  a  fact  that  his  house  was  full  of  food  and 
drink,  that  it  had  been  stocked  as  if  for  a  siege  ;  yet 
though,  according  to  Italian  accounts,  the  Turks 
were  in  a  desperate  state  for  want  of  eatables,  they 
never  entered  Von  Lochow' s  open  door  or  disturbed 
the  concessionaire  of  Gurgi  at  his  biological  researches. 
I  do  not  believe  that  this  young  German  was  a  spy ; 
but  his  enemies  were  confirmed  in  their  worst  sus- 
picions when,  about  8  o'clock  on  the  morning  of 
October  2Srd,  they  saw  the  Arabs  appear  in  the 
vicinity  of  his  bungalow,  which  they  evidently  used 
as  a  base  of  operations.  They  had  reached  it  from 
Senit  Beni-Adam  on  the  south,  having  crawled  north- 
wards within  shelter  of  the  sand-dunes  and  the 
dried-up  beds  of  torrents.  Soon  they  showed  them- 
selves clearly  on  the  edges  of  the  hills.  In  front  rode 
horsemen  ;  behind  marched  a  large  body  of  infantry. 
The  ample  turbans  and  white  flowing  robes  of  the 
horsemen  and  of  many  of  the  infantrymen  showed 
that  the  Arabs  had  at  length  joined  the  Turks.  For 
there  were  many  Turks  present  also  in  their  dark-blue 
European  uniform.  It  was  a  strange  and  ominous 
combination  of  East  and  West — Eastern  fanaticism 
led  by  Western  science.  The  infantrymen  were 
carrying  something  which  sharp-eyed  people  with 
good  telescopes  recognised  as  the  Turkish  flag. 

The  Arab  horsemen  in  front  advanced  fearlessly, 
brandishing  their  rifles  and  firing  on  the  gallop.  One 
of  them  carried  a  flag.     They  came  to  within  five 


THE    BATTLE    OF    SHARASHETT       127 

hundred  yards  of  the  ItaHan  trenches.  White  puffs 
of  sand  were  raised  by  the  hoofs  of  their  horses. 
Suddenly  there  was  a  distant  report  and  overhead 
appeared  a  white  puff  of  cloud  with  an  aluminium 
flash  in  the  middle  of  it.  It  was  the  bursting  shrapnel 
shell  of  an  Italian  mountain  battery.  At  the  same 
instant  the  40th  Italian  Regiment  began  to  fire  from 
the  safe  shelter  of  their  trenches.  The  dry,  incessant 
hiccough  of  the  mitrailleuse  was  heard  ;  the  mountain 
battery  (which  had  been  hurriedly  summoned  from 
Fort  Sultanie)  came  barking  into  action  ;  and  finally 
the  Sicilians  big  guns  drowned  all  other  noises.  Tons 
of  earth  seemed  to  be  thrown  into  the  air  each  time 
a  ten-inch  shell  from  the  battleship  struck  the  sand. 

In  face  of  all  this  stormy  protest  the  Arabs  did 
not  insist.  As  a  matter  of  fact  they  had  never 
intended  to  insist :  the  whole  advance  was  a  demon- 
stration meant  to  prevent  Caneva  from  sending 
reinforcements  from  his  right  wing  to  his  extreme 
left,  where  the  Turks  did  mean  business. 

Where  the  Arab  cavaliers  had  been  there  was  now 
a  white  figure  left  lying  on  the  ground.  Close  by  was 
a  wounded  horse  trying  ineffectually  to  rise.  Further 
off  was  a  dark  heap  which  may  have  been  a  Turk. 
Still  further  south  was  a  flying  crowd  of  horsemen 
and  infantry  disappearing  behind  a  sand-hill.  For 
some  time  the  enemy  continued  firing  at  the  Italian 
trenches,  where  two  soldiers  were  hit. 

Later  on,  the  officers  on  board  the  Sicilia  saw  some 
of  the  Turks  retiring  along  the  Zanzur  road,  and  fired 
about  half-a-dozen  shells  to  speed  the  parting  guest. 
Once  again  the  great  ten-inch  guns  uplifted  a  tre- 
mendous voice,  and  the  exploding  missiles  raised  enor- 
mous black  clouds  of  smoke,  like  Japanese  Shimose. 

A  Jewish  boy  on  his  way  home  from  Zanzur  to 


128        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

Tripoli  was  caught  between  the  two  fires  and  nearly 
driven  mad  with  fright.  First  he  lay  down  flat  in  a 
hollow  of  the  ground,  the  best  thing  he  could  have 
done  under  the  circumstances,  then  he  got  up  again 
and  ran  wildly  towards  the  Italians.  He  dropped 
exhausted  near  the  Italian  trenches,  but  was  picked 
up  and  given  some  refreshments.  When  questioned  as 
to  the  Arab  losses  he  said  that  they  were  very  heavy, 
but  obviously  his  testimony  could  not  be  relied  upon. 
The  Turko-Arabs  probably  lost  no  more  than  a  dozen 
men  killed  and  wounded  and  several  horses  killed. 
Now,  as  always,  the  Italian  shooting  was  very  bad. 
At  9.30  the  Turks  slipped  away,  and  at  10.15  the 
Italian  firing  ceased.  At  11  o'clock  two  companies 
of  the  84th  advanced  very  cautiously  in  skirmishing 
order.  A  large  number  of  them  entered  Von  Lochov/'s 
house  after  crawling  slowly  towards  it  with  extreme 
deliberation,  for  they  evidently  feared  an  ambush.  I 
watched  to  see  if  they  would  haul  down  the  German 
flag,  but  they  did  not  do  so. 

Other  soldiers  returned  laden  with  spolia  opima, 
to  wit,  item  one  Turkish  cavalry  saddle — the  stirrups 
dripping  with  blood,  perhaps  the  horse's  blood — ditto 
one  bit,  ditto  one  pair  riding-reins  (much  the  worse 
for  wear),  ditto  one  blood-stained  suit  of  uniform — the 
uniform  of  a  Turkish  private,  ditto  one  sword,  ditto 
three  or  four  carabines,  and  ditto  about  half-a-dozen 
f  ezzes.  A  wounded  horse  was  also  brought  in,  a  very  ill- 
fed  and  sorry-looking  beast  indeed.  The  magnificent 
Lodi  cavalry  should  have  been  able  to  trample  such 
horses  like  mud  beneath  their  hoofs.  But  the  reputa- 
tion of  the  Arab  for  desperate  valour  protected  him 
like  a  charm.  It  was  worth  ten  sotnya  of  Cossacks  to 
him.  The  perspiring  cavalrymen  of  Lodi  kept  a  most 
respectful  distance. 


THE    BATTLE     OF    SHARASHETT       129 

So  did  the  small  parties  of  Italian  infantry  which 
now  crawled  in  fear  and  trembling  towards  the  crests 
of  the  nearest  sand-hills,  and  remained  there  as  out- 
posts. Everywhere,  at  a  distance  of  some  three  or 
four  miles,  they  saw  mounted  vedettes  of  the  enemy, 
sitting  erect  in  their  saddles  on  the  edge  of  other 
sand-hills,  immobile,  on  the  watch.  But  the  invaders 
refrained  very  carefully  from  disturbing  those  fierce 
nomads. 

The  Italians  thought  that  the  enemy  had  had  enough 
of  it  and  was  retreating  to  Suni  Ben-Adam.  But, 
behind  that  veil  of  silent,  desert  horsemen,  the  Turks 
were  circling  round  towards  Bumeliana  and  Shara- 
shett.  For,  as  I  have  already  pointed  out,  it  was  at 
Sharashett  that  Nesciat  Bey  meant  to  strike  in 
earnest.  His  plan  showed  masterly  skill.  When, 
three  days  afterwards,  the  nature  of  this  plan  began 
to  dawn  on  the  Italians  the  "  Giornale  d'  Italia"  de- 
nounced it  as  didbolico,  and  reproached  the  Turks 
for  having  prepared  it  con  raffinata  scaltrezza  (with 
extreme  cunning)  "  several  days  earlier,  perhaps  even 
before  the  arrival  of  the  Italian  soldiers."  Perhaps 
the  "  Giornale  "  referred  exclusively,  however,  to  what 
it  fancied  to  be  the  treacherous  rear  attack  of  the 
"  friendlies." 

The  attack  on  Bumeliana,  which  was  now  the 
Quartier-General,  was  almost  an  exact  replica  of  that 
on  Gargaresh.  First  a  number  of  Arab  horsemen 
appeared  on  the  edge  of  a  sand-dune  and  galloped 
towards  the  well.  They  wheeled  round  and  round, 
their  long  garments  streaming  behind  them.  With- 
out ever  stopping,  they  fired  repeatedly  from  the 
saddle,  but  nobody  was  ever  hit.  It  was  the  same 
picturesque  display  of  horsemanship  of  which  the 
Arabs  in  Tripoli  are  as  fond  as  are  their  cousins  in 


130        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

Morocco.  It  was  certainly  a  very  dangerous  amuse- 
ment so  far  as  the  Arabs  were  concerned,  for  Bume- 
liana  was  the  most  strongly  fortified  part  of  the 
Italian  line  :  it  literally  bristled  with  rifles  and  cannon. 

The  soldiers  of  the  84th  Regiment  lined  the  trenches 
and  with  them  were  some  sailors  from  the  Carlo 
Alberto,  for,  despite  their  enormous  numerical  superi- 
ority over  their  opponents,  the  Italians  continually 
landed  bluejackets  and  sent  them  to  critical  points. 
They  used  the  fleet  as  a  military  reserve,  and  it  was 
their  sole  support,  for  there  were  no  reserves  in  town. 
The  danger  of  this  policy  was  twofold.  If  the  sea 
were  rough  all  communication  with  the  vessels  in 
harbour  might  be  cut  off,  as  it  sometimes  is  for  a 
whole  week  at  a  time.  And,  secondly,  it  was  some- 
what of  a  risk  to  leave  a  newly  occupied  city  almost 
entirely  under  the  control  of  Arab  policemen  who 
had  been  in  the  Turkish  service  only  a  month  before. 

Captain  Savino  had  charge  of  the  naval  battery  at 
Bumeliana,  and  he  opened  fire  on  the  Arab  cavaliers 
as  soon  as  the  latter  had  come  to  within  five  hundred 
yards  of  the  trenches.  On  the  right  of  the  Bumeliana 
well  was  the  40th  Regiment  with  several  field  and 
mountain  batteries.  On  the  left  were  other  field 
batteries,  as  well  as  machine-gun  sections. 

An  irresistible  fire  was  soon  brought  to  bear  on  the 
Arab  horsemen,  who  were  entirely  unsupported  by 
infantry  ;  and  finally  they  turned  and  disappeared 
behind  the  nearest  sand-hill.  They  carried  off  some 
wounded  with  them,  but  their  losses  seemed  to  be 
astonishingly  small.  After  their  disappearance  two 
squadrons  of  Italian  cavalry  rode  up  to  Bumeliana. 
They  had  been  telephoned  for,  but,  fearing  an  ambuSh, 
they  did  not  follow  the  Arabs  into  the  desert. 

The  next  attack  took  place  at  the  Cavalry  Barracks. 


THE    BATTLE    OF    SHARASHETT       131 

It  was  carried  out,  as  at  Gargaresh,  by  white-robed 
Arab  riders  and  foot  soldiers  mingled  with  khaki-clad 
Turkish  infantrymen.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  the 
assailants  were  driven  back  by  artillery  fire,  but, 
though  invisible  behind  the  sand-hills,  they  con- 
tinued firing  for  a  long  time. 

At  ten  o'clock  all  was  calm  again  at  the  cavalry 
barracks  ;  but  meanwhile  a  terrible  fight,  the  only 
real  fight  of  the  day,  was  going  on  in  the  oasis.  The 
oasis  line  from  the  Cavalry  Barracks  to  Sharashett 
was  held  by  the  11th  Bersaglieri.  The  5th  company 
was  on  the  seashore  at  the  extreme  left,  and  next 
to  it  was  the  4th  company.  Manillo  Giovanni  was 
at  the  head  of  one  half  of  the  5th  company  on  the 
extreme  left  between  the  road  which  runs  along  the 
sea  and  the  caravan  road  to  Tagiura.  To  his  right 
was  the  other  half  of  the  same  company  under  the 
command  of  Captain  Punzio.  The  force  holding  the 
oasis — the  weakest  part  of  the  whole  Italian  line — 
was  too  small,  not  entrenched,  unprovided  with 
artillery,  and  not  in  touch  with  the  rest  of  the 
army. 

Evangelista  Salvatore,  a  Sicilian  soldier  from  Rava- 
nusa,  and  one  of  the  few  Bersaglieri  who  escaped  from 
Sharashett,  told  next  day  a  very  graphic  story  of  the 
attack. 

He  was  awakened  just  before  dawn  by  the  furious 
barking  of  the  native  dogs  throughout  all  that  part 
of  the  oasis  and  especially  outside  the  Italian  line. 
The  animals  had  probably  been  disturbed  by  the 
stealthy  approach  of  a  great  mass  of  armed  men.  The 
sentinels  who  were  supposed  to  be  on  the  look-out 
seem  to  have  been  aroused  from  their  slumbers  by 
the  same  sinister  sounds,  which  I  can  declare  from 
personal  experience  to  be  the  most  doleful,  uncanny, 


132        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR  A  DESERT 

and  unnerving  noises  that  one  can  possibly  hear  in 
the  TripoH  oasis  at  night. 

But  neither  the  sentinels  nor  the  soldiers  profited 
by  the  warning,  and  they  were  all  alike  unprepared 
when,  a  few  moments  later,  the  Saraceni  (Saracens), 
as  Evangelista  called  them,  poured  in  a  murderous 
fire. 

The  assailants  were  largely  Arabs  stiffened  by  the 
8th  Turkish  Infantry  Regiment.  They  had  entered 
the  oasis  at  its  eastern  extremity,  and  the  umbrageous 
crests  of  the  date-palms  had  shielded  them  from 
observation  by  the  aeroplanes.  Moreover,  the 
Bersaglieri  had  thrown  out  no  scouts,  and  had  even, 
as  I  have  already  pointed  out,  neglected  the  ele- 
mentary precaution  of  clearing  a  fire-zone  in  front  of 
their  line. 

The  4th  and  5th  companies  never  recovered  from 
this  surprise,  and,  to  add  to  their  difficulties,  Arabs 
who  had  previously  slipped  through  the  Italian  lines 
began  to  attack  them  in  the  rear.  "  The  Saraceni 
seemed  to  rise  out  of  the  earth  on  every  side  of  us," 
said  Evangelista. 

At  8  o'clock  Captain  Punzio  found  that  he  had 
lost  touch  with  the  4th  company  on  his  right.  That 
company  had,  in  fact,  been  isolated  and  surrounded 
on  three  sides.  In  other  words  the  Italian  line  was 
broken.  Captain  Brucchi  took  refuge  with  a  hand- 
ful of  men  in  a  native  house.  He  then  attempted  a 
bayonet  charge,  but  was  overwhelmed  by  numbers 
and  killed.  Only  one  or  two  of  his  men  escaped. 
The  survivors  of  the  four  hundred  men  composing  the 
4th  and  5th  companies  of  the  boasted  Bersaglieri 
ran  like  deer. 

Through  the  breach  poured  a  flood  of  fanatical 
Arabs  and  of  hardly  less  fanatical  Turks.     Some  of 


THE    BATTLE    OF    SHARASHETT       133 

the  Bersaglieri  who  seem  to  have  learned  a  little 
Arabic,  threw  themselves  on  their  knees  and  yelled 
out  the  phrase  which  constitutes  acceptance  of  the 
Mohammedan  creed,  "  La  ilaha  illa-llahu  Mohammed 
rasulu  'llah  "  (There  is  no  God  but  God,  and  Moham- 
med is  the  Prophet  of  God).  But  the  Arabs  did  not 
happen  to  be  in  the  missionary  line  just  then.  They 
were  "  out  "  for  vengeance  and  for  loot,  not  for 
converts  ;  and  the  apostates  died  with  the  renuncia- 
tion of  Christianity  on  their  lips. 

Truly,  truly  the  Italians  have  disgraced  us.  Not 
only  have  they  lowered  the  military  prestige  of 
Europe  in  the  eyes  of  Africa,  they  have  soiled  the 
name  of  Christianity  in  the  presence  of  Islam.  One, 
at  least,  of  the  Italian  prisoners  in  Gharian  amuses 
his  Turkish  captors  by  the  most  lurid  denunciation 
of  King  Victor,  the  Pope,  Christianity,  and  even  the 
Banco  di  Roma  itself  ! 

The  Turks  w^heeled  to  the  left  in  order  to  attack 
the  Avhite  castle  of  the  Kaimakan  at  Henni,  where 
Colonel  Fara  of  the  11th  Bersaglieri  was  well  en- 
trenched and  fortified.  Henni  was  the  only  strong 
position  on  the  Messri-Sharashett  line — betweenHenni 
and  the  sea  at  Sharashett  there  were  no  trenches — 
and  it  saved  the  situation,  for  the  Turks  were  unable 
to  take  it. 

This  was  not  only  on  account  of  its  strength,  but 
also  on  account  of  the  numerical  weakness  of  the 
enemy.  The  whole  Turko-Arab  force  w^as  much  too 
weak,  in  any  case,  to  march  on  Tripoli  and  cut  off 
the  Italian  forces  at  Bumeliana  and  Gargaresh  ;  but 
it  became  too  weak  even  to  take  Henni  owing  to  the 
fact  that,  as  soon  as  Fara's  line  was  broken,  the  Arab 
section  of  the  joint  force  scattered  through  the  oasis 
on  the  hunt  for  loot.    They  hunted  singly  or  in  small 


134        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

groups.  Some  of  them  proceeded  to  strip  the  corpses  of 
the  Italian  dead,  to  seize  the  rifles  and  ammunition 
of  the  fallen,  to  plunder  the  regimental  stores.  Some  of 
them  penetrated  nearly  as  far  as  the  town.  Some 
of  them  climbed  trees  and  houses  from  which  they 
"  sniped  "  at  every  Italian  soldier  who  passed.  It 
took  the  invaders  several  days  to  shoot  down  these 
intruders,  whom  General  Caneva described  as  "rebels," 
because  he  regarded  them,  mistakenly,  as  natives  of 
the  Italian  oasis  who  had  "  treacherously  "  risen  in 
his  rear. 

About  a  hundred  natives  of  the  Italian  oasis  did 
rise  just  as,  even  yet,  some  Francophile  natives  of 
Alsace-Lorraine  might  rise  if,  in  the  event  of  a  Franco- 
German  war,  they  found  victorious  French  troops 
amongst  them.  But  the  majority  of  the  alleged 
rebels  whose  "  treachery "  led  to  the  subsequent 
massacre  of  many  innocent  oasis  Arabs  were  either 
Arabs  who  had  come  through  the  gap  at  Sharashett, 
or  Arabs  who  had  slipped  through  the  Italian  lines  at 
an  earlier  date.  In  both  cases  they  were  fighting 
Arabs  from  the  desert  and  they  owed  no  sort  of 
allegiance  to  King  Victor  Emmanuel  of  Savoy. 

This  fact  is  now  admitted  by  every  Italian  writer 
of  authority  who  has  dealt  with  this  subject,  but  in 
view  of  its  importance  in  connection  with  the 
lamentable  "  purging  "  of  the  oasis  which  followed, 
I  shall  deal  with  it  at  greater  length  in  a  later  chapter. 

Any  explanation  of  this  point  must  necessarily  be 
long  and  thorough,  and  a  long  explanation  at  this 
juncture  would  interfere  with  the  course  of  my 
narrative. 


CHAPTER    II 

THE   MAN-HUNT   IN   THE   OASIS 

I  DESCRIBED  in  my  last  chapter  how  the  4th  and  5th 
companies  of  the  11th  BersagHeri  were  scattered. 
They  threw  down  their  arms  and  fled  in  all  directions. 
Some  fled  towards  the  sea  and  escaped.  Some  sur- 
rendered and  were  taken  prisoners  to  Amruss,  where 
they  were  afterwards  put  to  death,  however,  on 
their  captors'  learning  of  the  slaughter  of  innocent 
Arabs  which  the  Italians  had  carried  out  in  their 
portion  of  the  oasis.  Some  committed  suicide. 
Basilio  Derin,  a  corporal  of  the  Bersaglieri,  tells  how 
a  captain  of  his  regiment,  on  finding  himself  almost 
alone,  nearly  all  his  men  having  been  killed  or 
wounded,  blew  his  own  brains  out. 

The  6th  company  of  the  Bersaglieri  had  been 
stationed  as  a  reserve  at  a  house  called  the  Maltese 
Inn  (Osteria  Maltese),  at  some  distance  behind  the 
4th  and  5th  companies,  but  when  the  fight  began  it 
came  to  the  assistance  of  the  well-entrenched  troops 
at  Henni  and  left  the  4th  and  5th  to  their  fate.  Out 
of  the  400  men  in  these  two  companies,  only  57  were 
left  at  nightfall.  General  Caneva  knew  exactly  the 
loss  he  had  sustained,  but  in  his  official  report  he  said 
that  "  the  losses  (of  the  Bersaglieri)  are  not  yet 
accurately  known."  Next  day  he  announced  that 
he  could  not  ascertain  the  number  of  casualties 
owing  to  the  fact  that  the  troops  were  engaged  in 

1 35 


136        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

disarming  the  natives.  I  do  not  know  if  he  has  yet 
owned  up  to  the  loss  the  Italians  sustained  on  thi« 
day.  But  I  do  know  that  he  was  very  prompt  in 
expelling  Italian  correspondents  who  did  own  up. 
The  representative  of  the  "  Giornale  di  Sicilia  "  put 
the  number  of  casualties  at  600,  I  think,  whereupon 
General  Caneva  ordered  his  expulsion  within  twenty- 
four  hours. 

On  the  other  hand  the  "  New  York  Herald " 
correspondent,  an  Italian  whose  eulogies  of  his  own 
army  were  reproduced  in  all  the  Italian  papers  as 
the  transports  of  an  intelligent  and  impartial  foreigner, 
and  whose  practical  denial  of  the  oasis  massacres 
was  afterwards  regarded  even  in  England  as  the 
denial  of  an  unbiased  American  correspondent, 
wired  his  paper  on  this  occasion  that  the  total  Italian 
loss  was — five  men  killed  !  ^ 

The  defence  of  Colonel  Fara  at  Henni  is  regarded 
by  the  Italians  as  one  of  the  greatest  feats  of  military 
history.  Colonel  Fara  has  been  decorated  and  dined 
and  belauded.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact  he  held  on  to 
Henni  because  he  could  not  let  go.  He  was  surrounded, 
and  had  he  ventured  out  into  the  oasis  he  would  have 
lost  his  own  life  and  the  lives  of  all  his  men. 

What  this  fight  at  Henni  and  Sharashett  brought 
out  in  a  particularly  vivid  light  was  the  newness  and 
amateurishness  of  the  Italian  army,  the  inability  of 
its  different  parts  to  work  harmoniously  together, 
and  the  failure  of  the  Commander-in-chief  to  keep 
in  touch  with  all  sections  of  his  force.  Considering 
the  compactness  of  the  expeditionary  army  and  the 
fact  that  one  could  ride  round  the  whole  line  in  a  few 

^  Giolitti  afterwards  telegraphed  to  General  Caneva  expressing  his 
satisfaction  with  "the  serene  and  impartial  news  service  of  the 
'  New  York  Herald '  and  with  its  sympathetic  attitude  towards 
Italy." 


THE  MAN-HUNT  IN  THE  OASIS        137 

hours,  this  state  of  things  is  almost  inexplicable. 
When  the  Bersaglieri  were  being  cut  to  pieces  at 
Sharashett,  nobody  at  Bumeliana  or  at  the  General 
Head-quarters  in  Tripoli  seemed  to  know  anything 
about  it.  They  heard  furious  firing  from  the  direc- 
tion of  the  oasis,  but  there  was  also  furious  firing  from 
Gargaresh  and  the  Cavalry  Barracks  ;  and  heavy 
firing  at  a  handful  of  evanescent,  jack-in-the-box 
Arabs  on  the  sky-line  had  for  weeks  been  a  pleasing 
and  familiar  feature  of  Tripolitan  life. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  when,  a  month  and  a 
half  later,  the  authorities  began  giving  out  the  truth 
in  small  doses  to  the  poor,  censored,  spoon-fed  people 
of  Italy,  inquisitive  folk  began  to  ask  incon- 
venient questions  about  this  affair  of  October  23rd. 
According  to  a  telephone  message  from  Rome,  which 
appeared  on  December  8th  in  a  Milanese  paper  : 

"  We  are  only  now  beginning  to  know  the  truth 
about  the  terrible  day  of  October  23rd,  and  there  are 
violent  complaints  made  with  regard  to  General 
Caneva.  Though  General  Caneva  had  under  his 
command  on  that  day  about  20,000  men,  he 
allowed  the  Arabs  to  surround  and  cut  to  pieces 
(two  companies  of)  the  battalion  of  Bersaglieri, 
not  only  without  taking  precautions  to  prevent 
this  being  done,  but  also  without  making  a  counter- 
attack, which  might,  after  the  first  most  disgraceful 
surprise,  have  prevented  the  slow  and  barbarous 
martyrdom  which  the  Arabs  inflicted  on  the 
Bersaglieri  who  remained  in  their  hands  on  the 
Henni  positions. 

"  There  are  people  who  maintain  that  the  story 
of  the  oasis  revolt  is  doubtful,  as  the  greater  number 
of  the  Arabs  who  fought  in  the  oasis  had  previously 


138        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR  A  DESERT 

forced  our  lines.  But  it  has  been  remarked  at  the 
Ministry  that,  even  admitting  the  unexpectedness 
of  the  Arab  revolt  in  the  interior  of  the  oasis, 
nothing  can  excuse  the  inaction  of  the  Commander- 
in-chief  all  day  long,  inaction  which  made  possible 
the  permanent  occupation  by  the  enemy's  troops 
of  positions  which  had  been  held  up  to  that  moment 
by  the  Italians." 

It  is  anticipating  a  little,  but  I  might  here  say 
that,  according  to  the  same  message,  it  was  then 
decided  in  the  Ministry  of  War  at  Rome  not  to 
"  have  recourse  to  the  extreme  step  of  recalling 
General  Caneva  " — that  would  look  too  much  like 
giving  way  to  the  agitation  in  foreign  newspapers, 
and  would  amount  practically  to  a  confirmation  of 
the  massacre  charges — but  "  to  surround  him  by 
such  influences  as  would  remove  all  fear  of  his 
remaining  inactive  under  similar  circumstances  in 
future."  The  "  influences  "  in  question  were  pre- 
sumably General  Frugoni  and  the  other  military 
leaders  who  were  hastily  despatched  to  Tripoli  early 
in  November. 

While  the  fighting  at  Henni  was  still  going  on, 
a  single  company  of  the  82nd  Infantry  wandered 
out  in  a  casual  sort  of  way  to  the  assistance  of  Colonel 
Fara,  who,  having  then  been  fighting  without  a  break 
for  eight  hours,  presumably  had  had  enough  of  it. 
Whoever  sent  such  a  small  force  on  such  a  serious 
mission  must  have  been  mad.  The  English  officer 
who  describes  this  action  in  "  Blackwood's  Magazine  " 
(December)  remarks  very  sarcastically  that  "  some 
one  suggested  to  the  Colonel  "  in  command  of  the 
82nd  that  he  should  act.  As  for  General  Caneva,  we 
do  not  hear  of  him  at  all  at  this  critical  juncture. 


THE  MAN-HUNT  IN  THE  OASIS        139 

He  had  had  his  benevolent  period.  He  was  soon  to 
have  his  vindictive  period.  But  this  was  evidently 
his  dormant  period.  At  all  events  one  company  of 
the  82nd  did  move,  but  it  was  stopped  on  the  way 
by  the  Arab  "  snipers,"  who  now  swarmed  in  the 
oasis.  It  was  stopped  at  the  Feshlum  mosque, 
from  the  summit  of  which  an  Arab  displayed  a 
Turkish  flag.  He  was  at  once  shot  down,  but  the 
fighting  around  the  mosque  went  on  till  evening. 
By  that  time  the  rest  of  the  82nd  had  come  up,  and, 
after  having  had  one  company  cut  to  pieces,  the 
rest  of  the  regiment  was  able  to  join  Colonel  Fara 
at  Henni,  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  enemy  had 
retired. 

Meanwhile  the  Arabs  who  had  invaded  the  oasis 
had  kept  up  a  continual  fire  on  the  rear  of  the  Italian 
line,  and  on  every  body  of  Italian  troops  which 
moved  through  the  palm  groves.  They  fired  from 
behind  the  large  uprights  of  wells,  from  the  tops  of 
palm  trees,  from  the  roofs  and  windows  of  houses, 
from  behind  cacti  and  olives.  General  Caneva 
explains  that  they  knew  the  ground  so  much  better 
than  the  Bersaglieri,  but  surely  the  latter  ought, 
after  twelve  days,  to  have  known  thoroughly  every 
date-palm  in  the  exiguous  piece  of  oasis  which  they 
had  occupied.  Most  of  the  Arabs,  moreover,  were 
strangers  to  those  parts,  having  come  from  Tagiura 
and  still  more  distant  places. 

General  Caneva  has  declared  that  all  these  Arabs 
who  invaded  the  oasis  were  armed  with  "  good 
Mauser  rifles."  As  a  matter  of  fact  some  of  their 
fire-arms  were  antiques,  nearly  useless  in  open  fight 
against  the  Italian  rifles.  I  afterwards  found  the 
ground  littered  with  powder-flasks  which  would  have 
been  considered  out  of  date  at  the  battle  of  Vinegar 


140        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A  DESERT 

Hill,  and  which  showed  that  some  of  the  Arabs  used 
muzzle-loaders.  On  these  flasks  I  found  printed 
the  familiar  word  "  London  "  below  the  name  of 
an  English  firm  which  flourished  in  Fleet  Street 
probably  in  the  time  of  Dr.  Johnson.^ 

It  is  no  wonder  that  under  these  circumstances 
the  ammunition  of  the  Arabs  was  soon  exhausted. 
Then  it  became  quite  easy  for  the  Italians  to  perform 
those  "  prodigies  of  valour  "  about  which  General 
Caneva  makes  such  frequent  mention.  The  men  in 
the  palm  trees  were  first  of  all  shot  down.  The  great 
clusters  of  golden-brown  dates  were  reddened  with 
their  blood  before  they  fell  heavily  to  the  ground. 

Quarter  was  never  of  course  given  nor  asked  for. 
And  the  Italians  did  not  clear  the  oasis  without 
paying  for  it  heavily.  For  the  enemy  were  amazingly 
mobile.  Crushed  in  one  place,  they  immediately 
appeared  in  another.  The  bare-footed  Bedouins 
bounded,  in  their  light  attire,  like  deer  ;  or,  lying 
flat  on  the  ground,  they  glided  through  the  under- 
wood "  like  snakes  " — to  use  an  Italian  comparison. 

A  group  of  Arabs  was  concealed  in  a  Moslem 
cemetery.  From  behind  the  gravestones  they  kept 
up  an  uninterrupted  fire  on  the  Italians.  Other 
Arabs  fired  from  behind  a  small,  domed  Saint's  tomb. 
The  Italians  advanced  against  them  in  loose  skir- 
mishing order  and  gradually  succeeded  in  dislodging 
them.  The  better  rifles  and  the  heavier  fire  told  and 
soon  silenced  the  fire  of  the  Arabs.  From  behind 
walls,  tree-trunks,  tombstones  and  houses  the  Moham- 
medans  ran,    some   throwing   away   their   weapons, 

^  It  is  a  common  error  to  suppose  that  the  Arabs  were  all  armed 
with  good  Mausers.  Enver  Bey  says  in  one  of  his  letters  :  •'  It  made 
me  feel  proud  that  though  armed  with  old  rifles  of  various  makes,  we 
had  repelled  in  a  nine-hour  fight  the  attack  of  an  enemy  overwhelm- 
ingly superior  to  us  in  numbers  and  in  equipment." 


THE  MAN-HUNT  IN  THE  OASIS        141 

some  being  caught  with  smoking  rifles  in  their  hands. 
Two  old  men  and  a  youth  had  been  firing  on  the 
Bersagheri  from  behind  a  mud-wall.  Their  shooting 
was  bad,  they  took  a  long  time  to  load,  and,  being 
in  a  fairly  open  position,  they  were  soon  surrounded. 
The  youth  threw  away  his  rifle  as  half-a-dozen  Italian 
soldiers  jumped  on  top  of  him.  In  an  instant  all 
three  were  dragged  forward  and  tied  together  by  the 
hands.  The  old  men,  one  of  whom  was  wounded, 
offered  their  wrists  in  silence  to  be  bound.  The 
youth  resisted,  more  through  terror  than  through 
obstinacy,  but  a  big  Italian  soldier  kicked  him 
brutally  in  the  stomach,  while  two  other  soldiers 
seized  his  hands  and  bound  them  tightly  to  those 
of  his  aged  companions.  The  Colonel  was  on  horse- 
back behind  a  wall.  His  sentence  was  brief  and  to 
the  point  :  "  Shoot  them  !  "  The  prisoners  were 
given  a  few  moments'  grace,  however,  in  order  to 
prepare  for  death,  and  they  all  three  sat  down  on 
a  sandy  knoll,  while  soldiers  surrounded  them  with 
fixed  bayonets.  The  old  men  looked  out  towards 
the  desert  with  a  perfectly  calm  and  unwavering 
glance  and  their  lips  did  not  move.  The  young  man 
hung  his  head  and  mumbled  something  rapidly  all 
the  time.  When  the  moment  came  for  them  to  rise, 
a  sergeant  kicked  the  youth  in  the  back  so  brutally 
that  the  Arab  suddenly  sprang  to  his  feet,  but 
suddenly  fell  back  again  owing  to  the  fact  that  his 
hands  were  tied  to  those  of  his  companions.  The 
soldiers  then  took  all  three  by  the  arms  and  helped 
them  to  their  feet.  It  was  now  seen  that  there  was 
a  pool  of  blood  on  the  ground  Avhere  the  wounded 
man  had  sat,  and  that  he  had  become  very  pale. 
Evidently  his  life  was  ebbing  fast,  and  a  tingle  of 
pain  must  have  shot  through  him  as  he  stood  up. 


142         ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

for  he  made  a  sudden  involuntary  grimace  and  then 
smiled  grimly  with  white,  drawn  lips.  The  soldiers 
hustled  the  group  along  towards  the  desert  and  the 
old  men  instantly  obeyed,  the  unwounded  supporting 
the  wounded  man,  whose  steps  had  become  tottering 
and  over  whose  eyes  a  glazy  film  was  gathering  fast. 
The  youth  alone  held  back  and  begged  piteously  for 
life.  By  way  of  reply  one  of  the  soldiers  struck  him 
a  frightful  blow  in  the  face.  The  unfortunate  Arab 
could  not  protect  himself,  for  his  hands  were  tied. 
Blood  gushed  from  his  mouth  and  nostrils,  and  as 
he  walked  forward  with  his  companions  he  spat  out 
several  teeth.  The  soldiers  laughed,  and  one  of  them 
was  preparing  to  bestow  another  buffet  on  the 
prisoner,  when  an  officer  interfered,  driving  the  soldier 
off  and  rating  him  in  violent  language. 

The  Turkish  fire  had  by  this  time  ceased  and  the 
enemy  had  disappeared.  The  Desert  was  absolutely 
a  Desert.  In  it  there  was  not  a  single  living  thing. 
Twelve  soldiers  took  their  places  in  the  trenches  and 
leant  their  rifles  on  the  sand-bags.  A  group  of  other 
soldiers  hustled  the  three  doomed  men  out  into  the 
waste.  A  sergeant  gave  them  a  final  rude  shove,  and 
said  "  Barra  !  "     "  Barra  "   is  a  vulgar  Arab  word 

meaning  something  like  "  Go  to  h 1  !  "    or  "  Go 

and  be  d d  to  you  !  "   and  it  is  generally  the  first 

native  expression  which  a  European  learns  on  coming 
to  Tripoli.  I  must  admit,  however,  that  he  often 
learns  it  in  self-defence  against  the  hordes  of  beggars 
who  pester  him. 

The  two  old  men  walked  steadily  into  the  Desert, 
their  eyes  fixed  on  the  distant  sky-line.  The  wounded 
man  was  now  near  his  last  gasp.  His  steps  were 
marked  with  blood,  but  there  was  a  triumphant 
smile  on  his  face.     The  youth  alone  turned  his  eyes 


THE  MAN-HUNT  IN  THE  OASIS        143 

towards  his  enemies.  He  still  begged  for  mercy,  but 
he  could  not  turn  his  body  right  round  on  account  of 
his  hands  being  bound  to  those  of  his  companions. 
The  soldiers  hurled  rough  jokes  and  taunts  after  him 
as  he  looked  over  his  shoulder  at  them.  Suddenly 
their  flippant  clamour  was  broken  in  upon  by  a 
stern,  abrupt,  staccato  order,  as  curt,  menacing,  and 
hard  as  the  fall  of  an  iron  bar.  "  Fuoco  !  "  It  was 
the  order  to  fire.  The  condemned  men  were  now 
about  a  dozen  feet  off.  The  twelve  soldiers  had 
them  covered  beyond  all  possibility  of  escape. 
Twelve  shots  rang  out,  and  instantly  all  three 
prisoners  fell  in  a  heap  together  on  the  sand.  Their 
limbs  twitched,  but  not  a  moan  escaped  them.  A 
European  photographer  walked  over  to  them  and, 
finding  that  the  youth  was  still  alive,  though  un- 
conscious and  dreadfully  wounded,  he  told  the 
Italians.  Then  a  soldier  approached  the  blood- 
stained heap  on  the  ground,  put  his  rifle  to  the  youth's 
temple,  and  blew  out  his  brains.  Portions  of  grey 
matter,  flesh,  bone,  and  fragments  of  skin  with  the 
hair  still  attached  were  scattered  over  the  legs  of  the 
soldier's  trousers.  He  looked  like  a  butcher.  Mean- 
while, the  red  blood  gushed  out  of  the  open  head  as 
out  of  a  fountain.  The  white  sand  drank  it  eagerly 
up.  The  thirsty  Desert  likewise  drank  the  blood  of 
the  two  old  men,  one  of  whom  lay  on  his  back, 
staring  straight  up,  the  smile  of  triumph  still  on  his 
lips,  and  in  his  eyes  the  glad  look  of  a  Moslem  martyr 
who  sees  at  last  the  Glory  of  the  Prophet  of  God. 
The  other  old  man  lay,  face  downwards,  underneath 
his  companion. 

The  Desert  whence  they  came  had  drunk  their 
life-blood.  The  Desert,  their  great  mother,  will 
avenge  them. 


144        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR  A   DESERT 

The  repulse  of  the  Arabs  was  followed  by  the 
awakening  of  a  frightful  blood-lust  among  the  Italians, 
who  were  convinced  that  the  natives  who  had  given 
them  such  trouble  in  the  oasis  were,  all  of  them, 
"  friendlies  "  who  had  been  living  close  to  the  town, 
and  on  good  terms  with  them  up  to  this  time. 

Signor  Giuseppe  Bevione  wrote  in  the  "  Stampa  " 
that  "  there  was  a  violent  reaction  among  our  men, 
once  they  were  convinced  that  there  had  been 
treachery.  They  fired  without  pity  on  all  Arabs  who 
approached  them  in  a  suspicious  manner." 

This  meant,  of  course,  that  they  fired  on  all  Arabs 
whatsoever :  on  small  shopkeepers  coming  back 
from  Tripoli,  on  local  muleteers,  gardeners,  and 
Avorkmen  ;  all  of  whom  were  dressed  exactly  as  the 
fighting  Arabs  had  been  dressed.  But  this  mistake 
was  natural,  and  I  could  excuse  it  if  it  had  not  gone 
on  for  days  without  the  slightest  effort  being  made 
by  General  Caneva  to  put  a  stop  to  it,  until,  three 
days  after,  it  attained  monstrous  dimensions. 

There  is  no  cry  which  an  army  that  has  sustained 
a  reverse  through  its  own  fault,  is  so  apt  to  take  up 
as  the  cry  of  "  treachery  !  "  And  probably  a  Latin 
army  is  liable  to  take  up  that  cry  with  greater  con- 
viction than  any  other.  In  the  present  instance  the 
Italian  soldiers  were  convinced  that  they  had  been 
betrayed.  General  Caneva,  who  certainly  should 
have  known  better,  did  not  enlighten  them,  did  not 
make  the  slightest  effort  to  save  the  peaceful  Arabs 
from  the  consequences  of  that  terrible  cry.  The 
Nationalist  firebrands  themselves,  now  (April,  1912) 
accuse  Caneva  of  "  senility,"  and  demand  his  recall. 
Senility  is,  I  suppose,  the  most  charitable  explana- 
tion of  the  Italian  commander's  apathy  on  this 
occasion. 


THE  MAN-HUNT  IN  THE  OASIS        145 

The  clearing  of  the  suburban  part  of  the  oasis  after 
the  Itahan  Une  had  closed  again  was  not  very  difficult, 
and  it  was  then  that  gli  episodi  di  valore  (to  use  the 
phrase  of  an  Italian  who  describes  the  scene)  on  the 
Italian  side,  furono  innumerevoli.  Captains  and  colonels 
and  men-at-arms  burst  with  the  greatest  bravery  into 
peaceful  Arab  houses  where  the  harmless  and  un- 
armed inhabitants  were  cooking  their  humble  koosh- 
koosh  for  the  evening,  and,  flourishing  sabres  and 
revolvers,  yelled  "  Arrendetevi  !  (Surrender  !)  Viva 
V Italia !  "  Doors  were  battered  down.  Shots  were 
fired.  Bearded  officers  frowned  and  snorted  and 
stamped  up  and  down  like  despots  in  melodrama. 
The  old  Arab  women  were  naturally  terrified  by 
these  manifestations,  and  the  little  brown  naked 
children  began  to  cry.  It  is  probably  to  this  part  of 
the  battle  that  General  Caneva  refers  when  he  praises 
the  coolness,  the  bravery,  and  the  spirit  of  initiative 
displayed  by  his  men. 

As  a  rule  the  officers  and  men  were  unnecessarily 
cruel  towards  the  Arabs  whom  they  had  condemned 
to  death.  The  soldiers  continually  beat  their  prisoners 
about  the  face,  and  Mr.  Magee  of  the  "Daily  Mirror" 
tells  me  that  he  saw  an  officer  prodding  a  prisoner 
furiously  in  the  groin  with  his  scabbard.  And  all 
the  time  there  poured  from  the  lips  of  the  execu- 
tioners a  torrent  of  invective  ;  which  I  presume, 
however,  the  condemned  men  did  not  understand. 

It  was  the  same  next  day.  It  has  been  the  same 
ever  since.  This  ill-treatment  of  natives,  guilty  and 
innocent,  is  as  much  a  feature  of  Tripolitan  street- 
life  as  the  brutal  ill-treatment  of  horses  is  a  feature 
of  Neapolitan  street-life. 

In  the  city  of  Tripoli  I  have  seen  soldiers  dash  to 
the  ground  a  humble  tray  of  matches  and  sweet- 


146        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

meats  which  an  Arab  child  was  carrying  around  in 
order  to  earn  a  few  pence  by  peddling  its  little  wares 
to  the  frequenters  of  the  cafes.  I  heard  that  child 
cry  as  if  his  heart  would  break  on  seeing  all  his  little 
capital  gone  ;  but  one  thing  I  have  never  seen,  I 
have  never  seen  an  officer,  or  a  civilian,  take  a  child's 
part.  On  the  Italian  steamer  by  which  I  left  Tripoli 
a  Turkish  family  also  left,  and  a  Moslem  man-servant 
carried  their  trunks  aboard.  Some  officious  little 
Neapolitan  clerk  or  counter-jumper  who  happened 
to  be  a  passenger  took  a  sudden  violent  dislike  to 
this  man-servant,  raised  a  terrific  hullabaloo  about 
him,  had  him  arrested  there  and  then,  had  him 
dragged  into  the  smoking-saloon,  stripped,  and 
searched.  If  a  knife  had  been  found  on  that  un- 
fortunate Turk  he  would  have  been  sent  ashore  and 
shot,  but  luckily  nothing  was  found  and  he  was 
dismissed  without  any  apology  being  offered  him 
for  the  disgraceful  treatment  to  w^hich  he  had  been 
subjected.  And  yet  the  Italians  wonder  why  the 
Arabs  do  not  love  them  ! 

All  the  houses  were  searched  and  wrecked,  the 
inhabitants  being  collected  together  in  batches  and 
sent  into  the  city.  More  wretched  aggregations  of 
humanity  I  have  seldom  seen,  the  men  being  in  rags, 
and  their  hands  tied  behind  their  backs.  In  some 
of  their  houses  old  muzzle-loaders,  or  cartridges,  or 
antiquated  revolvers  had  been  found,  but,  as  I  shall 
afterwards  show,  this  was  no  proof  of  their  owners' 
guilt.  Many  Arabs  were  seized  because  they  had 
knives,  or  razors,  or  empty  cartridges  in  their  posses- 
sion, and  against  a  great  number  there  was  no  charge 
save  that  they  were  Arabs.  I  shall  deal,  however, 
with  this  question  later  on. 

One  house  where  arms  were  found  was  a  tavern. 


THE  MAN-HUNT  IN  THE  OASIS        147 

The  words  "  Vino  e  Liquori  "  were  carved  on  a 
stone  over  the  Hntel  of  the  door,  and  from  a  Uttle 
balcony  hung  an  ItaHan  flag.  Another  Itahan  flag 
flew  from  the  roof  of  the  house.  The  carabinieri 
seized  a  good  deal  of  money  in  this  house  and  seques- 
trated it.  They  also  found,  or  pretended  to  find, 
arms.  Two  Arabs  inside  were  arrested.  The  Italian 
flag  was  taken  from  the  balcony  and  jokingly  offered 
to  the  younger  of  the  Arabs  that  he  might  kiss  it. 
Instead  of  kissing  it,  he  bit  it,  and  attempted  to  tear 
it  with  his  teeth.  That  action  led,  of  course,  to  his 
immediate  imprisonment.  What  happened  to  him 
afterwards  I  do  not  know,  but  I  would  not  care  to 
bet  much  on  the  probability  of  his  being  still  in  the 
flesh. 

Every  man  had  his  hands  tied  behind  his  back. 
The  pure  Arab  type  predominated  in  the  crowd,  but 
there  were  also  full-blooded  negroes  and  a  variety  of 
gradations  between  those  two  extremes.  Quite  a 
number  of  young  Arab  boys  marched  among  the 
prisoners,  and  were  afterwards  put  to  death  with 
them.  Each  gang  was  guarded  by  Italian  soldiers 
with  fixed  bayonets. 


In  the  evening  the  Arabs  who  had  fallen  in  the 
oasis  were  denounced  in  cafe  and  barrack  and  public 
place  by  frothy  Italian  orators  as  "  rebels  "  and 
"  traitors." 

That  is  one  view  of  the  matter,  but  I  must  say 
that  it  is  not  my  view.  On  the  evening  of  the  23rd, 
I  sat  down  and  wrote  what  I  thought  on  this  subject. 
I  wrote  it  for  a  respectable  American  newspaper 
which  had  sent  me  to  Tripoli  in  order,  I  suspect, 
that  I  might  send  it  pleasing  pen-pictures  of  the 


148        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

Italian  operations ;  articles  (illustrated,  of  course) 
such  as  would  gratify  the  Italian  colony  in  New 
York,  a  colony  whose  advertisements  and  subscrip- 
tions are  not  to  be  despised  even  by  the  managers 
of  colossal  American  dailies  (the  Bedouin  of  the 
Desert  does  not  advertise,  and  is  therefore  a  negligible 
quantity  from  the  managerial  point  of  view). 

What  I  wrote  did  not  appear,  but  I  give  it  now. 
I  said  : 

"  The  Italians  denounce  as  '  traitors  '  all  the 
Arabs  who  attacked  them  to-day.  Now,  I  would 
not  apply  that  term  even  to  the  peaceful  oasis 
Arabs  who  took  down  their  rifles  from  the  thatch 
and  boldly  fired  on  the  Bersaglieri.  I  regard 
them,  on  the  contrary,  as  heroes,  heroes  as  great 
as  Brescia,  or  Mazzini,  or  Garibaldi,  or  Washing- 
ton, or  William  Tell.  They  had  a  perfect  right  to 
shoot  down  the  Italians  from  behind  hedges,  or 
mud-walls,  or  tombstones,  or  palm  trees,  or  any- 
thing else  that  took  their  fancy.  The  Italians  did 
not  come  here  as  their  guests.  The  Arabs  violated 
no  law  of  their  traditional  hospitality  by  shooting 
down  the  land-grabbers  as  they  would  shoot  down 
rabid  dogs." 

I  shall  anticipate  a  little  in  order  to  tell  how  some 
of  the  Arab  survivors  of  this  battle  were  treated. 
Fourteen  Arab  soldiers  who  had  broken  into  the 
oasis  and  been  wounded  there,  managed  to  crawl 
into  town  and  take  refuge  in  a  jondak  or  native  inn. 
A  treacherous  Jew  who  happened  to  hear  about 
them  promptly  sold  them  to  the  Italians,  whereupon 
they  were  arrested,  tried,  and  hanged  in  the  open  as 
"  spies  and  rebels."  The  sentence  was  carried  out 
with  every  circumstance  of  pomp,  and  a  Franciscan 


THE  MAN-HUNT  IN  THE  OASIS        149 

friar  was  provided  with  a  chair  in  a  prominent 
position — why,  it  is  not  easy  to  say.  Pinned  to  the 
breast  of  each  corpse  was  a  statement  to  the  effect 
that  he  had  been  put  to  death  for  firing  treacherously 
on  the  Itahan  rear  on  October  23rd,  though  this 
point  had  never  been  proved,  and  though  the  men 
were  undoubtedly  Arab  soldiers  from  the  desert  who 
had  broken  through  the  Italian  line. 

The  sentence  was  so  unjust  that  it  disgusted  even 
some  jingo  Italians.  Nobody,  for  instance,  sup- 
ported the  war  in  the  beginning  with  more  enthusiasm 
than  the  Sicilian  deputy  De  Felice,  but,  after  seeing 
this  hanging  and  examining  the  evidence  on  which 
the  death-sentence  was  based,  that  gentleman  wrote 
to  the  following  effect  in  the  "  Secolo  "  of  Milan :  ^ 

"  I  supported  the  war  because  I  thought  it  was 
a  work  of  civilisation.  But  I  now  see  that  this 
work  is  carried  on  by  means  of  the  gallows.  The 
sentence  which  handed  over  those  fourteen  persons 
to  the  hangman  violated  the  fundamental  regula- 
tions of  our  penal  code,  which  does  not  permit  of 
the  death  penalty.  Even  if,  in  time  of  war,  that 
code  does  allow  the  death  penalty  to  be  inflicted 
in  extreme  cases,  it  does  not  allow  hanging.  More- 
over, the  sentences  to  which  I  object  are  grounded 
on  a  blind  prejudice  which  makes  those  condemned 
men  answerable  for  the  cruelties  of  October  23rd. 
I  have  studied  the  protocols  of  the  trial,  and  con- 
vinced myself  that  no  sure  and  positive  grounds 
for  this  assertion  have  been  stated. 

"  The  most  important  witness  for  the  prosecution 
was  Lieutenant  Altina,  who,  according  to  his  own 

^  I  condense  his  remarks,  not  directly  from  the  Italian,  but  in- 
directly from  a  German  summary  given  in  the  "  Vossische  Zeitung  " 
of  December  12,  1911. 


150         ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

account,  has  lived  among  the  Arabs  for  seventeen 
years,  and  possesses  an  intimate  knowledge  of  the 
Arab  character.  Lieutenant  Altina  thought  these 
Arabs  were  guilty  because  of  their  manner  of 
answering  his  questions,  and  because  of  their 
demeanour,  which  was  sometimes  stupid,  some- 
times crafty.  'Furthermore,'  said  this  officer, 
'  when  a  Moslem  swears  on  the  Koran,  he  does  not 
tremble  if  he  is  innocent.  If  he  trembles,  he  is 
certainly  guilty.' 

"  So  much  for  the  evidence  of  Lieutenant  Altina. 
I  intend  to  write  very  soon  a  full  account  of  this 
unfortunate  day's  work,  and  to  make  clear  that 
the  responsibility  for  the  blood  spilt  on  this  occa- 
sion is  on  the  heads  of  higher  personages  than 
Lieutenant  Altina.  I  desire  for  conquered  peoples 
the  observance  of  the  laws  of  nations  and  not  the 
wrath  of  the  conquerors.  ...  If  Italy  has  gone 
to  Tripoli  in  the  name  of  civilisation,  she  must  be 
the  messenger  of  justice.  If  she  is  not,  if  she 
busies  herself  with  erecting  gibbets  and  not  with 
extending  the  realms  of  Justice,  then  I  would  not 
hesitate  for  a  moment  to  declare  that  Italy  only 
does  harm  to  the  cause  for  which  we  have  fought, 
and  that  the  zeal  for  the  advancement  of  civilisa- 
tion by  which  the  Government  professes  to  be 
animated  is  nothing  but  a  most  disgraceful  and 
unrighteous  lie." 

The  Italian  Government  tried  to  make  its  own 
soldiers  believe  that  the  Tripoli  adventure  was  a 
Crusade,  that  the  mission  of  General  Caneva  was  to 
plant  the  Cross  in  a  heathen  land.  Instead  of  that 
he  is  busily  planting  brothels  and  grog-shops,  gibbets 
and   jails.     And   the   triumphal   music   of  the   con- 


THE  MAN-HUNT  IN  THE  OASIS        151 

querors  is  the  clank  of  chains,  not  the  chains  of 
prisoners  captured  in  fair  fight,  but  the  chains  of 
sick  Turkish  soldiers  dragged  from  the  Tripolitan 
hospitals  and  sent  to  Italy  "  to  make  a  Roman 
holiday." 


CHAPTER    III 

THE   GREAT   PANIC 

It  was  towards  midday  on  October  23rd  ;  and,  after 
a  morning's  hard  work  signing  official  documents, 
General  Caneva  was  comfortably  drawing  his  legs 
under  his  well-provided  table  at  the  Castello,  in 
happy  ignorance  that  anything  out  of  the  ordinary 
had  taken  place  at  Sharashett.  But  in  some  mys- 
terious way  the  native  population  of  Tripoli  had 
learned  that  the  Italian  line  was  broken  and  that  the 
Turks  were  in  the  oasis.  There  was  consequently  an 
outburst  of  panic  in  the  midst  of  which  the  Italian 
officers,  soldiers,  and  camp-followers  completely  lost 
their  heads.  I  shall  describe  the  whole  tragi-comedy 
somewhat  in  detail,  as  it  has  a  direct  bearing  on  the 
massacres  which  followed.  It  shows  how  liable  to 
foolish  panic  is  the  Italian  army.  And  it  was  in  a  fit 
of  foolish  panic  that  the  "  purging  "  of  the  oasis  was 
carried  out. 

At  about  one  o'clock  on  that  day,  I  was  sitting 
down  to  lunch  in  the  Hotel  Minerva  when  there  was 
a  wild  rush  down  the  street.  First  a  carriage  tore 
past.  Then  a  soldier  was  carried  by  with  his  face 
bleeding. 

Now,  both  the  carriage  and  the  soldier  had  dis- 
appeared before  we  could  question  them  ;  but  from 
some  mysterious  source — probably  from  one  of  our 
waiters  who  had  just  been  conversing  with  the  cook 

152 


THE   GREAT   PANIC  153 

— an  astounding  explanation  proceeded,  propagated 
itself,  and  was  accepted.  It  was  to  the  effect  that 
(1)  the  carriage  was  full  of  Arabs  who  were  firing 
right  and  left ;  and  (2)  the  soldier  had  been  fired 
upon  out  of  a  window  close  by.  In  other  words  the 
city  had  revolted.  "  The  town  Arabs  have  risen  ! 
There  is  an  insurrection  in  the  city  !  They  are 
potting  Europeans  from  the  windows  !  "  Such  was 
the  refreshing  piece  of  news  which  somebody  in  the 
corridor  conveyed  to  us  at  the  top  of  his  voice. 

Immediately  the  crowded  dining-room  rose  like 
one  man  and  made  for  the  door.  In  fact,  I  might 
say  without  exaggeration  that  the  guests  scattered 
as  if  a  bomb  had  fallen  amongst  them. 

My  German  friend  and  I,  the  only  two  non-Italians 
present,  remained  seated ;  partly  because  we  had 
witnessed  those  alarums  and  excursions  among  the 
Italians  before,  partly  because  we  were  very  hungry. 

Meanwhile  there  was  a  wild  helter-skelter  of 
terror  -  stricken  people  past  the  street  window. 
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat  went  a  magazine  pistol  just  out- 
side. Inside  the  hotel,  officers  tore  upstairs  for 
something  and  tumbled  downstairs  again,  clutching 
revolvers  which  they  flourished  so  wildly  that  I 
began  to  get  seriously  alarmed  about  my  personal 
safety.  The  officers  tore  out  into  the  street,  and  I 
tried  to  get  a  bit  of  dinner.  I  might  as  well  have 
tried  to  raise  the  dead,  for  the  Maltese  waiters  were 
all  outside  gesticulating  furiously.  At  a  table  oppo- 
site me  had  sat  an  Italian  civilian — a  newspaper 
proprietor,  I  think — with  an  impassive  face  and  a 
monocle.  He  suddenly  vanished,  and  when  I  looked 
through  the  window  out  into  the  street  I  saw  him  in 
the  midst  of  a  dense  crowd  of  Italians,  bounding  like 
a  bear  on  hot  irons.    He  must  have  jumped  three  feet 


154        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

high  each  time.  His  arms  and  legs  were  circulating 
like  windmills — and  the  monocle  was  still  in  his  eye  ! 
Close  by,  the  arms  of  the  hotel  proprietor  were  beat- 
ing the  air  like  flails. 

Bang  !  bang  !  bang  !  Were  these  infernal  machines 
going  off,  or  merely  pistol  shots  ? 

They  were  neither.  They  were  simply  doors  and 
windows  shutting  all  down  the  street.  Some  shop- 
keepers not  only  locked  their  doors,  but  also  nailed 
them  up  so  that  they  had  afterwards  to  open  them 
with  crowbars.  Wild-faced  Maltese  women  shut 
their  bedroom  windows  and  piled  up  the  furniture 
against  the  doors.  One  could  hear  them  dragging 
beds,  sofas,  and  other  heavy  objects  about  their 
rooms. 

The  average  Italian  is  not  at  any  time  a  gentle- 
voiced  person.  In  Tripoli,  at  least,  he  seemed  to 
have  been  provided  by  nature  with  a  voice  like  a 
fog-horn.  On  distant  ships  at  sea  those  voices  might 
be  useful  if  not  melodious  ;  but  when  a  score  of  them 
shriek  all  together  in  a  small  dining-room  the  effect 
is  apt  to  be  overpowering.  On  the  present  occasion 
the  uproar  was  so  terrific  that  I  had  to  put  my  fingers 
in  my  ears,  and  even  then  I  could  hear  the  shrill 
wild-Indian  whoop  of  the  Christian  damsels  barri- 
cading themselves  in  their  bedrooms.  "  The  Turk  ! 
The  Turk  !  The  Turk  !  "  This  was  the  dreadful 
cry  that  resounded  on  all  sides,  and  in  every  grada- 
tion of  tone,  from  the  thin  wail  of  the  infant  to  the 
hoarse  bass  of  the  man.  The  impression  evidently 
was  that  the  Osmanli  had  broken  the  Italian  line 
and  entered  the  city,  while  their  Arab  allies  were 
lending  a  hand  by  shooting  from  their  roof-tops  and 
their  windows.  What  a  terror  the  Turk  must  have 
been  in  his  time  when,  even  in  his  decay,  his  very 


THE   GREAT   PANIC  155 

name  can  excite  such  a  panic  !  As  a  wooer  of  Chris- 
tian maidens  his  manner  must,  indeed,  have  been 
somewhat  peremptory. 

Having  reluctantly  given  up  all  attempts  to  get 
a  little  soup,  I  bagged  some  bread  and  cheese  and 
sallied  into  the  street.  But  I  was  almost  carried  off 
my  feet  by  an  insane  rush  of  people  past  the  hotel 
door.  The  street  was  a  wild  welter  of  Levantine 
humanity  amid  which  I  could  distinguish  fezzes, 
solar  helmets,  turbans,  straw  hats,  and  fistfuls  of 
hair  !  The  space  in  front  of  the  hotel  seemed  to  be 
inhabited  by  a  collection  of  the  most  violent  lunatics 
in  existence.  Such  gesticulating,  roaring,  and  pranc- 
ing I  never  saw  in  my  life  before. 

A  crowd  of  men,  women,  and  children  were  col- 
lected in  front  of  the  French  Consulate  hammering 
wildly  at  the  door  and  imploring  admittance.  Among 
them  were  Maltese,  Italians,  French  subjects  from 
Tunis  and  Algeria,  Turks,  Arabs,  but  especially 
Jews.  Hundreds  had  already  swarmed  into  the 
Consulate  through  the  windows,  over  the  neighbour- 
ing roofs,  and  from  adjacent  balconies. 

Suddenly  the  door  of  the  Consulate  was  thrown 
open,  and  M.  Seon,  a  spare,  white-haired  old  gentle- 
man, appeared  on  the  threshold.  The  crowd  drew 
back  not  only  because  he  was  the  Consul,  but  also 
because  he  carried  a  revolver  in  his  hand. 

"  What  do  you  want  ?  "    he  asked. 

"  Refuge  !  Refuge  !  Refuge  !  The  Turks  !  The 
Turks  !  "  was  the  universal  cry.  The  Consul  turned 
to  his  gorgeously  dressed  Arab  cavass.  "  Open  the 
inner  doors,"  said  he,  "  and  give  shelter  to  all  these 
people.  When  you  have  done  that,  hoist  the  flag  on 
the  flag-staff." 

This  hoisting  of  the  flag  is,   I  need  hardly   say, 


156         ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

carried  out  by  all  Consulates  and  Legations  in  times 
of  dire  emergency,  as,  for  example,  when  a  city  is 
stormed  by  an  invading  and  infuriated  army.  The 
cavass  wore  the  French  livery.  Nevertheless,  as 
soon  as  he  appeared  on  the  roof  in  order  to  hoist  the 
tricolour  he  was  fired  on  by  a  group  of  soldiers  on 
top  of  the  Italian  school  close  by.  Those  soldiers, 
amongst  whom  were  some  Franciscan  friars,  had 
evidently  supposed  that  the  cavass  was  a  wild  Arab 
who  had  come  out  on  the  roof  for  the  purpose  of 
potting  people  passing  in  the  streets  below.  This 
incident  is  characteristic  of  the  happy-go-lucky  way 
in  which  the  Italian  soldiers  used  their  rifles,  and 
prepares  us  for  their  wholesale  murder  of  innocent 
Arabs  on  the  26th. 

The  cavass  escaped  without  injury,  but  the  Consul 
complained  to  General  Caneva ;  whereupon  the 
latter  apologised  and  promised  that  this  sort  of 
thing  should  not  occur  again.  And  here  I  might  say 
that  the  French  Government  has  shown,  throughout 
all  this  war,  extraordinary  forbearance  with  the 
Italians.  Few  French  journalists  spoke  at  all  of  the 
massacres  of  October  23rd-27th.  Some  of  the 
French  correspondents  in  Tripoli  not  only  closed 
their  eyes  to  what  was  going  on,  but  denied  that  it 
was  going  on.  It  was  evident  from  the  first  that 
Paris  was  doing  its  best  to  make  all  Frenchmen 
Italophile,  so  that  its  policy  of  detaching  Italy  from 
the  Triplice  might  be  successful. 

With  one  or  two  exceptions,  the  Frenchmen  in 
Tripoli  did  not  care  a  straw  for  murdered  Arabs. 
They  thought  only  of  Alsace-Lorraine ;  and  the  anti- 
Italian  movement  among  the  Germans  made  them 
rub  their  hands  with  joy  and  declare  themselves 
more  pro-Italian  than  ever.    Why,  under  the  circum- 


THE   GREAT   PANIC  157 

stances,  the  Italians  should  have  afterwards  held  up 
French  steamers  is  incomprehensible  save  on  the 
ground  that,  as  Rome  has  blundered  and  muddled 
ever  since  this  war  began,  so  it  blundered  and  muddled 
here.  For  the  French  could  easily  have  avenged 
themselves  by  conniving  at  the  importation  by  the 
Turks  across  the  Tunisian  frontier  of  ammunition, 
arms,  and  recruits.  They  did  not  do  so,  however. 
On  the  contrary,  they  held  up  even  food  supplies 
while  allowing  shiploads  of  food  to  go  from  Tunis  to 
Tripoli  city,  and  while  even  manufacturing  aero- 
planes for  the  Italian  Government. 

The  English  Consulate  was  filled  with  even  more 
refugees  than  the  French  Consulate,  and  in  the 
Jewish  quarter  around  it  there  was  terrible  excite- 
ment. In  the  narrow  bazaars  opposite  the  Citadel 
the  street-firing  by  the  Italians  was  heaviest.  The 
roof  of  the  Castello  and  the  roofs  of  the  adjoining 
houses  were  lined  with  troops.  There  was  a  terrible 
stampede  for  refuge  into  the  mosques,  synagogues, 
and  Christian  churches,  and  even  into  the  boats  in 
the  harbour.  Meanwhile,  a  machine-gun  rattled 
persistently  down  in  the  large  market  by  the  sea- 
shore, and  there  was  firing  in  other  parts  of  the  city. 
All  this  fusillade  was  caused  by  panic-stricken 
Italians.  Orderlies  and  hospital  guards,  soldiers 
working  at  the  wharves  and  soldiers  stationed  in  the 
various  public  buildings,  rushed  into  the  streets,  un- 
slung  their  rifles,  and  in  some  cases  fired  right  and 
left  without  having  the  faintest  idea  of  what  had 
happened  or  why  they  themselves  had  thus  run 
amok. 

Their  bandaged  heads  dripping  with  blood,  Sicilian 
Bersaglieri  staggered  through  the  streets  saying  that 
they  had  been  treacherously  fired  on  at  the  front, 


158        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

and  imploring  their  fellow-islanders  to  take  vendetta 
for  them  on  the  Arabs.  Whereupon  their  comrades 
from  Syracuse  and  Palermo  would  snatch  up  their 
arms  with  many  a  "  Sacramento  !  "  and  rush  out  to 
kill  some  native.  The  war  had  suddenly  become 
transformed  into  a  huge  Sicilian  blood-feud.  General 
Caneva  was  not  "  in  "  the  thing  at  all.  He  might 
as  well  have  been  with  Captain  Scott  in  the  South 
Polar  regions,  so  far  as  any  indication  of  his  existence 
went.  His  dormant  period  had  not  yet  come  to  an 
end. 

The  streets  were  filled  with  a  disordered  crowd  of 
Italians,  Arabs,  Armenians,  and  Jews,  each  in  his 
national  costume.  The  Jews,  who  are  very  pro- 
Italian,  were  especially  terrified  at  the  prospect  of. 
the  Turks  coming  back.  Thinking  that  I  was  an 
Italian,  some  of  the  Jewish  women  threw  themselves 
at  my  feet  to  beg  my  protection,  and,  trying  hard  to 
look  as  patriarchal  as  possible,  I  did  my  best  to  re- 
assure them.  Meanwhile,  some  of  them  set  upon 
and  beat  an  innocent  Arab  boy  employed  by  my 
colleague.  Colonel  Pavloff,  of  the  "Novoe  Vremya." 
Armed  soldiers  tore  past  in  all  directions,  and  it  was 
impossible  to  stop  them  or  to  get  any  information 
out  of  them. 

To  still  further  augment  the  confusion,  a  number 
of  camel-drivers  employed  by  the  Italians  drove 
their  animals  from  the  Market  Square  into  the  narrow 
alleys  of  the  city,  with  the  result  that  in  many  places 
the  streets  were  completely  blocked,  and  the  panic 
increased  tenfold. 

A  battalion  of  infantry  marched  down  to  the  bread- 
market,  which  was  filled  with  the  usual  impassive 
crowd  of  Arabs,  some  asleep  on  the  ground,  some 
eating.     This  tale  is  told  by  the  Italian  deputy  De 


THE   GREAT   PANIC  159 

Felice  in  the  "  Messaggero  "  of  Rome,  October  28th  ; 
and,  as  the  legislator  in  question  was  then  strongly 
in  favour  of  the  war,  I  presume  that  his  story  is 
true. 

The  Italian  Lieutenant-Colonel  in  charge  of  the 
party  ordered  his  men  to  take  aim  at  the  Arabs.  His 
first  impulse  had  probably  been  to  massacre  every 
Arab  on  the  spot.  But  he  was  somewhat  taken 
aback  by  the  utter  indifference  of  the  natives  to  their 
danger.  "La  morte  non  interessa  gli  Arabi''  (Death 
does  not  interest  the  Arabs),  concluded  the  Honour- 
able De  Felice,  who  goes  on  to  tell  us  that  "  a  young 
Arab  seated  on  his  hunkers  at  the  edge  of  a  fountain 
still  continued  smiling,  while  an  old  man  who  had 
been  dozing  on  the  sand  at  the  youth's  feet  still 
continued  to  doze." 

Astonished  at  this  indifference  to  death,  the  Italian 
commander  made  his  men  lower  their  rifles,  and  sent 
some  soldiers  to  tell  the  natives  that  they  must  leave 
the  market-place  at  once.  The  Arabs  went  off  slowly 
into  a  blind  alley  near  by  ;  whereupon,  seized  by 
another  happy  inspiration,  the  Lieutenant-Colonel 
placed  a  sentinel  on  guard  at  the  entrance  to  the 
alley,  with  orders  to  let  none  of  the  Arabs  out  again. 
I  am  not  sure  what  was  afterwards  done  to  those 
poor  people.  They  may  have  been  exiled,  and  it  is 
even  possible  that,  during  the  delirium  of  the  next 
three  days,  they  may  have  all  been  taken  out  and 
butchered.  But  there  was  absolutely  no  charge 
against  them.  They  had  been  simply  buying  and 
selling  there  as  they  had  always  been  accustomed  to 
do,  and  they  were  unarmed. 

When  some  degree  of  calm  had  been  restored  in 
the  city,  the  Italian  soldiers  advanced  into  the 
bazaars  as  into  an  enemy's  country.     Then  began 


160        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR   A   DESERT 

the  work  of  surrounding  and  searching  suspected 
houses. 

The  soldiers  suddenly  suspected  a  house,  situated 
in  a  narrow  blind  alley  near  the  British  Consulate,  of 
harbouring  rebels,  and  in  an  instant  they  had  closed 
the  street  and  surrounded  the  building.  Some  men 
went  inside  with  revolvers  in  their  hands.  Others 
prepared  to  shoot  down  anybody  who  showed  him- 
self on  the  roof.  In  this  particular  instance  I  do  not 
believe  that  there  was  any  loss  of  life,  for  the  house 
contained  no  rebel  ;  but  elsewhere  throughout  the 
city  loss  of  innocent  life  did,  I  am  afraid,  take  place. 

All  this  disorder  in  the  streets  could  have  been 
prevented  if  the  Commander-in-chief  had  taken  care 
to  police  the  city  after  his  arrival.  But  he  placed  all 
his  men  in  the  firing  line  and  had  no  reserves  in  the 
city  at  all.  I  often  walked  for  hours  in  the  streets 
without  once  seeing  an  Italian  soldier.  The  only 
armed  men  about  were  Turkish  zaptie,  or  policemen, 
whom  the  invaders  had  foolishly  taken  into  their 
service.  General  Caneva  used  to  gratify  his  vanity 
by  making  half-a-dozen  of  these  wild  fellows  always 
ride  after  his  carriage  whenever  he  drove  in  state 
through  the  streets.  He  must  have  imagined  him- 
self a  Roman  conqueror  on  a  sort  of  triumphal  pro- 
cession followed  by  conquered  enemies.  But  on 
October  23rd,  the  General  heard  una  notizia  gra- 
vissima  (a  most  serious  piece  of  news),  which  froze 
the  marrow  in  his  bones.  It  was  to  the  effect  that 
two  of  his  native  escort  were  plotting  to  kill  him. 
He  was  never  afterwards  seen  with  his  procession  of 
equestrian  zaptie. 

During  the  greater  part  of  the  23rd,  however, 
these  renegade  policemen  of  the  Sultan  were  en- 
trusted with  the  guard  of  most  parts  of  the  city,  and 


THE   GREAT   PANIC  161 

I  met  them  frequently  sitting  in  the  narrow  lanes, 
their  rifles  between  their  knees.  If  the  Moslems  had 
gained  the  ascendancy,  there  would  be  very  little 
doubt  as  to  the  side  on  which  these  policemen  would 
fight. 

This  extraordinary  panic  might  very  easily  have 
had  grave  consequences,  especially  if  the  demoralised 
troops  on  the  Italian  left  had  got  the  idea  that  the 
city  in  their  rear  had  also  revolted  and  was  in  the 
hands  of  the  enemy.  It  is  not  pleasant  to  think  of 
what  would  almost  certainly  have  taken  place  had 
it  occurred  at  night,  and  in  conjunction  with  a 
desperate  attack  from  the  outside. 

Speaking  about  this  "  momento  d'  alarme  in  cittd,'* 
General  Caneva  says  that  it  would  have  become 
more  serious  had  it  not  been  for  "  il  sangue  freddo 
dei  nostri." 

But  I  have  already  shown  that  it  was  the  Italians 
who  lost  their  heads  most  of  all.  General  Caneva's 
own  residence  and  the  roofs  of  all  the  neighbouring 
houses  were  covered  with  soldiers,  who  lay  down  flat 
with  their  rifles  pointed  at  the  street  below  and  their 
fingers  on  the  triggers.  Every  doorway  and  gateway 
in  or  near  the  castle  was  blocked  with  sand-bags 
behind  which  soldiers  lay,  as  if  they  were  in  the 
firing-line.  This  was  hardly  an  exhibition  of  "  sangue 
freddo"  (cold  blood) ;  an  American  would  have  been 
disposed  to  call  it,  rather,  an  exhibition  of  "  cold 
feet."  It  certainly  had  a  deplorable  effect  on  the 
city.  And  yet,  in  his  official  telegram  describing 
this  panic,  General  Caneva  says  that  it  all  arose  out 
of  the  following  ridiculous  incident  : 

"  A  doctor  who  was  bringing  a  wounded  officer 
into  town  ordered  the  soldier  who  accompanied  him 
to  drive  back  the  Arab  sight-seers  who  were  crowd- 


162        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR  A   DESERT 

ing  around  the  carriage.  The  orderly  executed  the 
command,  and  the  crowd  in  falHng  back  gave  rise  to 
confusion,  and  hence  to  a  universal  flight."^ 

I  traversed  the  town  during  the  panic,  and  could 
nowhere  find  evidence  that  the  urban  Arabs  had 
fired  a  shot.  Some  shots  from  the  front  had  reached 
the  market  -  place  ;  some  soldiers  wounded  in  the 
oasis  had  been  carried  into  the  city ;  the  story  of  the 
rising  of  a  few  "  friendlies  "  had  been  narrated  in  the 
bazaars — and  had  become  more  and  more  fantastic 
as  it  passed  from  mouth  to  mouth.  These  and  similar 
trifles  had  caused  the  whole  scare,  and  created  a  state 
of  mind  which  made  the  massacres  in  the  oasis 
possible  a  few  days  later. 

I  repeat  that  I  went  through  the  town  on  this  day 
and  out  into  the  oasis,  and  it  is  my  firm  conviction 
that  the  oasis  Arabs,  generally  speaking,  did  not  rise 
at  all.  The  firing,  which  was  supposed  to  come  from 
the  "  friendly "  Arabs,  came  really  from  hostile 
fighting  Arabs,  who  had,  as  I  have  already  pointed 
out,  slipped  through  the  lines.  I  have  also  admitted 
that  a  hundred  oasis  Arabs  at  the  very  most  had 
joined  themselves  on  to  these.  My  opinion  is  con- 
firmed by  the  statement  of  Mr.  Magee,  a  London 
correspondent,  who  was  a  private  in  the  South 
African  War.  Mr.  Magee  was  with  the  Italians  on 
the  south-east  when  they  were  fired  on,  but  he  re- 
garded the  matter  as  trifling.    Nobody  was  hit.    The 

^  This  was  Caneva's  story  for  the  ItaUan  Press.  He  had  an 
absolutely  contradictory  story  for  England.  In  an  interview  with 
Mr.  Bennet  Burleigh,  which  probably  appeared  anonymously  in  the 
"Daily  Telegraph,"  but  which  I  find  signed  in  the  "Roma"  of 
November  6th  and  in  all  the  Italian  papers,  he  spoke  of  "a  deliberate 
revolt  in  the  city  "and  declared  that  "the  green  flag  of  the  Prophet 
was  displayed  in  the  streets  ;  our  soldiers  were  fired  on  from  the  roofs 
and  the  windows.  They  were  assailed  and  stabbed  in  the  houses  and 
in  the  middle  of  the  streets." 


THE   GREAT   PANIC  163 

Arabs  in  the  rear  were  quickly  captured  and  shot. 
Mr.  Magee  came  into  town  with  his  photographs. 
Now,  he  could  not  have  come  through  the  oasis  if  it 
was,  as  the  Italians  represent  it  to  have  been,  swept 
in  all  directions  by  rebel  bullets.  In  short,  there  was 
no  general  rising  in  the  oasis,  and  great  numbers  of 
the  oasis  Arabs  were  butchered  from  this  day  on- 
wards, not  because  they  had  rebelled,  but  simply 
because  General  Caneva  did  not  like  to  have  in  his 
rear  a  large  body  of  men  who  might  possibly  rebel. 
The  rules  of  war  give  very  wide  latitude  to  a  General, 
but  I  do  not  believe  that  they  allow  him  to  go  as  far 
as  this. 


CHAPTER    IV 

SOME  LESSONS   OF  THE   GREAT   PANIC 

The  worst  feature  of  this  great  panic  was,  in  my 
opinion,  the  apathy  and  uselessness  of  the  ItaHan 
leaders.  On  similar  occasions  the  Turks  had  behaved 
much  better.  Ever  since  the  beginning  of  the  war, 
indeed,  it  was  "  unspeakable  Stamboul "  which  had 
been  prudent,  careful  of  life,  merciful ;  it  was  Holy 
and  Royal  Rome  which  had  been  addle-headed  and 
inhumane. 

Towards  the  end  of  September  last  it  was  con- 
fidently predicted  in  the  English  Press  that  the 
Turks  would  poison  the  wells  along  their  line  of 
retreat,  and  thus  make  it  impossible  for  the  Italians 
to  follow  them.  They  did  no  such  thing.  They  did 
not  even  cut  the  water-supply  at  Bumeliana  nor 
burn  the  town  behind  them,  though  they  might  very 
easily  have  done  both.  Seldom,  indeed,  in  modern 
times  has  a  retreating  army  shown  so  much  con- 
sideration for  the  civilian  population,  and  even  for 
the  enemy,  as  the  army  of  Nesciat  Bey  exhibited  on 
its  evacuation  of  Tripoli  in  October  last. 

I  have  already  said  something  on  this  subject, 
but  I  shall  here,  at  the  risk  of  repeating  myself,  refer 
to  it  again,  so  as  to  contrast  Turkish  efficiency  in 
moments  of  crisis  with  Italian  inefficiency. 

Before  the  bombardment  on  October  3rd  and  4th, 
Nesciat  Bey  and  Munir  Pasha  had  kept  order  most 

164 


LESSONS  OF  THE  GREAT  PANIC       165 

admirably  in  town.  The  Englishmen  who  lived  in 
Tripoli  during  these  critical  days  assure  me  that  the 
Turkish  authorities  behaved  on  that  occasion  with 
a  self-possession,  an  energy,  and  a  capacity  which 
surpass  all  praise.  A  general  massacre  of  Europeans 
was  feared,  whereupon  the  acting  Vali  issued  an 
edict  prescribing  the  punishment  of  death  for  any  one 
who  even  "  drew  blood  from  the  nose  "  of  a  European. 
The  foreign  consulates,  houses,  and  churches  were  well 
guarded.  The  large  community  of  Maltese  British 
subjects  had  to  be  looked  after  by  the  Turks,  owing 
to  the  fact  that  the  Italians  had  not  kept  their 
promise  to  the  British  Consul  of  providing  two  trans- 
ports on  which  to  carry  off  all  British  refugees. 
During  those  days  of  alarm  not  a  single  Maltese  was 
killed.  Since  the  Italians  have  taken  charge  seven 
or  eight  Maltese  have  been  shot,  owing  to  their  not 
having  given  the  password  or  for  some  other  reason. 
Many  Italian  subjects  had  also  to  be  protected,  for 
Italy  had  left  her  nationals  strewn  all  over  Tripoli- 
tania  and  Cyrenaica.  She  had  done  so  in  the  hope, 
perhaps,  that  some  of  the  missionaries,  at  least, 
would  have  had  the  enterprise  to  get  massacred,  and 
thus  give  her  some  sort  of  casus  belli. 

If  so,  the  wish  was  father  to  the  thought,  for  at 
the  beginning  of  the  war  the  Italian  papers  were 
continually  reporting  massacres  of  Italians  by  the 
Turks  in  Tripoli — probably  in  the  wild  hope  that 
some  of  these  massacres  would  really  come  off.  First, 
we  had  the  massacre  of  some  Franciscans  at  Benghazi. 
It  was  announced  and  deplored — but  it  did  not 
happen.  Then  we  heard  of  the  massacre  of  an 
Italian  "  scientific  "  mission,  which  had  been  probably 
spying  out  the  land  in  the  interior.  With  a  deplor- 
able lack  of  patriotism  this  mission  also  failed  to  get 


166         ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

massacred.  Then  the  Italian  Consul  at  Derna  was  in 
difficulties.  The  Arabs  wanted  to  murder  him  and 
all  the  rest  of  the  local  Italian  colony,  but  the  Turks 
prevented  a  single  life  being  lost,  and  eventually, 
after  guarding  them  for  four  days,  handed  the  Consul 
and  his  party  over  to  the  commander  of  an  Italian 
gunboat.  Naturally,  on  reaching  Augusta,  the 
Consul  used  the  vilest  language  about  the  very  Turks 
who  had  saved  his  life,  and  left  it  to  be  understood 
that  he  had  terrorised  the  whole  Derna  garrison  with 
his  revolver. 

During  the  bombardment  of  Tripoli,  on  October 
3rd  and  4th,  some  Franciscan  friars,  some  nuns,  and  a 
number  of  sick  people  in  the  hospital  remained 
behind  in  the  town.  The  Turks  did  not  molest  the 
sick  people,  nor  the  Franciscans,  nor  the  nuns  ;  they 
did  not  even  put  foot  in  the  church.  When  their 
turn  came  to  show  mercy,  the  Italians  burned  Arab 
villages,  butchered  the  strong,  and  threw  out  the  sick 
people  to  die  like  dogs  in  the  street.  They  seemed  to 
imagine  that  nothing  was  to  be  permitted  to  the 
Turks  and  everything  to  "  the  third  Italy,"  to  the 
race  which  has,  in  the  words  of  the  latest  threatening 
letter  which  I  have  received  from  an  Italian,  "  detto 
per  tre  volte  civiltd  al  Mondo  "  (thrice  civilised  the 
world). 

This  conviction,  that  there  should  be  one  scale  of 
treatment  for  the  Italians  and  another  and  different 
scale  for  the  Turks,  seems  to  be  deeply  implanted 
in  the  Italian  mind.  When  the  Turks  asked  the 
Italians  to  leave  Tripoli,  just  before  the  bombard- 
ment, so  that  they  should  not  run  the  risk  of  being 
massacred,  one  of  the  journalists  declined  to  "  move 
on,"  defied  the  Ottoman  authorities,  and  said  that  he 
would  not  leave  unless  between  two  "  janissaries." 


LESSONS  OF  THE  GREAT  PANIC       167 

He  wanted  to  see  the  bombardment  from  the  town 
itself,  and  though  I  must  admit  that  he  was  brave 
and  even  reckless,  I  must  also  say  that  his  behaviour 
on  that  occasion  was  like  that  of  a  naughty  child 
which  is  being  sent  to  bed.  How  would  the  Italians 
have  behaved  towards  a  Turkish  journalist  who 
acted  in  the  same  way  and  refused,  for  instance,  to 
leave  the  oasis  on  October  23rd  ?  That  question  can 
be  easily  answered.  Whenever  Turkish  spies  were 
killed  by  the  Italians,  it  was  only  just.  Whenever  an 
Italian  spy  was  killed  by  the  Arabs,  the  Peninsular 
papers  declared  that  he  had  been  barbaramente 
trucidato  (barbarously  butchered). 

The  highest  tribute  has  been  paid  by  all  the 
Italian  correspondents  to  the  manner  in  which 
Munir  Pasha  kept  Tripoli  quiet  and  prevented  an 
anti-Italian  outburst  on  October  2nd.  And  on  that 
occasion  the  difficulties  of  the  Turks  were  enormous. 
They  had  had  no  orders  from  Stamboul,  and  could 
not  get  any  answer  to  their  telegrams.  They  had  to 
attend  to  (1)  the  unloading  of  the  Derna  ;  (2)  the 
calling  up  of  the  reserves  ;  (3)  the  organisation  of 
caravans  laden  with  arms  and  provisions  ;  (4)  the 
evacuation  of  the  town ;  and  (5)  the  protection  of  the 
Christian  population. 

How  they  were  able  to  accomplish  the  two  last- 
mentioned  tasks  at  one  and  the  same  time  is  some- 
what of  a  mystery,  for  if  they  evacuated  the  town  they 
could  not  very  well  leave  there  enough  troops  to 
maintain  order.  But  they  succeeded.  With  all  his 
faults,  the  Turk  is  born  to  rule.  He  has  the  incom- 
municable faculty  of  commanding  men,  and  keeping 
some  rough  sort  of  law  and  order  among  the  most 
variegated  and  insubordinate  populations  that  can 
be  found  in  the  world.    This  habit  of  command  comes 


168        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

naturally  to  the  Ottoman,  just  as  it  comes  naturally 
to  the  English  soldier  or  administrator  in  wild  parts 
of  the  earth. 

The  Turkish  commandant  at  Zouara  is  Major 
Mahomed  Moussa  Bey,  and  when  a  terrible  panic 
broke  out  among  the  townspeople  on  the  occasion  of 
the  first  Italian  bombardment  he  drew  his  revolver 
and  shot  the  two  chief  panic-mongers  dead,  with  the 
result  that  the  scare  suddenly  ceased.  If  General 
Caneva  or  any  of  his  officers  had  had  an  equal 
capacity  for  controlling  men  and  meeting  emergencies, 
the  great  Tripoli  panic  of  the  23rd  would  not  have 
lasted  half-an-hour,  and  the  subsequent  oasis  mas- 
sacres would  have  come  to  an  abrupt  conclusion 
with  the  public  execution  of  the  first  soldier  caught 
shooting  innocent  natives. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  must  be  confessed  that  not 
only  were  General  Caneva  and  his  officers  unac- 
customed to  deal  with  subject  races  ;  the  soldiers 
under  their  command  were  also  unaccustomed  to 
do  so.  The  Italian  army  is  very  young,  raw,  and 
inexperienced.  Being  composed  mostly  of  Southern 
Italians,  the  Tripolitan  Expeditionary  Force  was 
peculiarly  liable  to  sudden  blasts  of  panic.  Its 
leader's  aloofness,  absence,  and  want  of  energy  made 
it  still  more  liable. 

The  Expeditionary  Army  in  Tripolitania  is  only  a 
casual  collection  of  people  in  uniform  ;  it  cannot, 
properly  speaking,  be  called  an  army  at  all.  The 
English,  Russian,  German,  French,  and  Japanese 
armies  are  on  quite  a  different  plane.  It  is  like  a 
motor-car  which  has  been  put  together  by  amateurs 
and  which,  though  it  looks  all  right  from  the  outside, 
cannot  move  of  itself,  owing  to  a  defective  co- 
ordination of  the  parts  inside,  and  must  be  drawn 


LESSONS  OF  THE  GREAT  PANIC       169 

by  horses.  The  officers  are  very  brave,  and  have 
nearly  all  been  affected  by  the  jingo  propaganda 
of  the  Nationalists  ;  but  the  soldiers  have  not  the 
faintest  interest  in  the  war  and  not  the  faintest  desire 
to  fight.  1 

During  battle  many  of  them  do  not  look  over  the 
trenches,  for  fear  of  exposing  their  faces  to  a  possible 
bullet.  Hence  the  infinitesimal  losses  of  the  enemy 
during  all  their  demonstrations  before  Bumeliana 
and  Gargaresh.  Hence  the  fact  that,  contrary  to 
the  usual  custom  in  war,  a  large  proportion  of  the 
casualties  among  the  Turks  is  due  to  artillery  fire, 
a  comparatively  small  proportion  to  rifle  fire. 

A  peculiarity  of  this  war  is,  on  the  one  hand,  the 
extremely  violent  and  sanguinary  language  of  the 
officers  and  the  journalists  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  very  modest  results  accomplished  by  the  army. 
Some  of  us  may  have  noticed  this  same  peculiarity 
not  many  years  ago  in  the  case  of  another  Eastern 
European  race,  the  Greeks.  In  Athens  we  had  also, 
before  the  Graeco-Turkish  war,  a  tremendous  out- 
burst of  Chauvinism.  Every  house  was  to  be  a 
fortress.  Ancient  Greece  had  come  to  life  again. 
There  were  frequent  demonstrations  in  front  of  the 

^  The  real  explanation  of  the  Italian  inactivity  for  over  half  a  year, 
despite  the  fact  that  there  are  no  less  than  twenty -four  Italian  generals 
in  Tripolitania,  is  this — the  Italian  soldier  is  a  poltroon.  When  not  a 
poltroon  he  is  an  Anarchist  or  a  mutineer.  In  November  last  two 
Anarchist  soldiers  ran  amok,  took  refuge  in  the  French  Consulate, 
and  fired  out  of  the  windows  at  their  comrades.  There  are  now  five 
houses  in  Tripoli  filled  with  soldiers  charged  with  mutiny.  Guarino, 
the  Tripoli  correspondent  of  the  "Avanti"  (quoted  by  the  "  Neue 
Freie  Presse"  of  April  10th)  tells  an  ominous  story  of  the  discontent 
among  the  time-expired  men  and  of  their  anxiety  to  get  home  again. 
To  every  palm-tree  they  affixed  notices  saying  that  "The  18S8-j^ear 
soldiers  want  to  go  home."  When  the  23rd  and  37th  regiments  and 
the  engineers  were  ordered  to  march  to  an  unknown  destination  on 
the  sea-coast  in  order  to  take  part  in  a  military  operation,  those 
soldiers  were  "  in  a  state  of  indescribable  excitement.  They  wept, 
they  sang  outrageous  songs,  and  their  officers  had  to  put  up  with  it 
alL"     "With  such  .soldiers,"'  adds  Guarino,  "a  war  is  impossible." 


170        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

palace,  and  it  was  clear  that  the  King  must  either 
declare  war  or  vacate  his  throne.  The  inflated 
language  of  the  Athenian  newspapers  was  exactly- 
like  the  inflated  language  of  the  Roman  newspapers 
to-day. 

The  extreme  impatience  of  the  Greek  Chauvinists 
with  the  mildest  and  most  judicious  criticism  has  its 
exact  counterpart  in  the  extreme  impatience  of  any 
criticism  which  is  now  manifested  by  the  Italian 
Chauvinists.  In  both  cases  any  one  who  counselled 
prudence  was  denounced  as  cowardly,  anti-patriotic, 
sold  to  the  enemy.  In  the  first  case  the  result  was — 
Larissa.  The  result  in  the  second  case  is  already  bad 
enough,  and  may  possibly  be  worse. 

I  had  not  been  a  week  among  the  Italian  soldiers 
before  I  began  to  notice  what  an  extraordinary  re- 
semblance there  was  between  them  and  the  modern 
Greeks.  And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Sicilian  and 
Southern  Italian  is,  on  the  whole,  indistinguishable 
almost  from  the  Greek.  In  both  you  find  the  same 
excitability,  the  same  readiness  with  the  knife,  the 
same  recklessness  in  the  individual,  the  same  useless- 
ness  of  the  mass  for  military  purposes  requiring 
steady  courage,  patience,  and  staying  power. 

The  same  similarity  has  struck  almost  every 
foreign  observer  who  has  seen  the  Italian  Expedition- 
ary Army  in  Tripoli.  It  has  particularly  struck 
the  Turkish  Commander-in-chief,  Fethi  Bey.  In  a 
conversation  with  a  correspondent  of  the  Vossische 
Zeitung  some  weeks  ago,  that  Ottoman  officer  said 
that,  taking  everything  into  consideration,  he  regarded 
General  Caneva's  soldiers  as  inferior  to  the  Greek 
soldiers  whom  he  had  fought  at  Larissa.  And  he 
went  on  to  tell  how  readily  whole  regiments  of 
Italians    throw   away  rifles,   knapsacks,   everything 


LESSONS  OF  THE  GREAT  PANIC       171 

— and  bolt  for  it.  If  the  Italians  had  to  face  the 
entire  Turkish  army  as  the  Greeks  had  to  do,  the 
Cross  of  Savoy  would  undoubtedly  have  gone  do^\Ti 
ere  now  before  the  Crescent  of  Stamboul. 

Like  the  adventure  out  of  which  the  Greeks  emerged 
with  such  a  sorry  mien,  this  Italian  adventure  is  an 
unreal,  literary,  poetical,  journalistic,  archaeological 
production.  This  war  is  "run"  by  crazy  Futurists 
and  Impressionists.  In  his  "Bataille  de  Tripoli," 
Signor  F.  T.  Marinetti  boasts  that  the  Italian  Govern- 
ment is  "devenu  futuriste,"  that  the  artillerymen 
are  "truly  Futurists,"  that  the  aviators  are  also 
"Futurists."  God  help  them  all !  Enthusiastic  Greek 
journalists  clamoured  for  war  because  they  had  read 
of  Salamis  and  Marathon.  Enthusiastic  Italian  jour- 
nalists clamoured  for  war  because  they  had  read  of 
Julius  Caesar. 

In  both  cases  "  pets "  of  Europe  had  broken 
loose  and  become  excited  by  the  idea  that  they 
could  emulate  the  exploits  of  their  forbears.  Italy 
would  not  be  a  united  kingdom,  and  Greece  would 
not  be  independent  at  all,  were  it  not  for  England, 
France,  and  Prussia.  But  now,  if  any  criticism 
comes  from  the  countries  which  set  modern  Italy 
on  her  feet  and  started  her  in  business,  so  to  speak, 
there  is  a  violent  response  to  the  effect  that  it  was 
Italy  which  made  us.  In  the  minatory  and  denuncia- 
tory Italian  letters  of  which  I  now  possess  a  collection 
I  am  always  reminded  that  Italy  has  "  thrice  civil- 
ised the  world." 

At  the  risk  of  receiving  more  of  those  communica- 
tions, I  must  repeat  (for  it  is  necessary  to  thoroughly 
grasp  this  fact  in  order  to  understand  what  follows) 
that  the  Italian  army  in  Tripoli  is  extremely  raw 
and  inexperienced. 


172        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

Even  "  Punch,"  which  is  fond  of  poking  fun  at 
our  own  Territorials,  would  regard  some  of  the  things 
done  by  the  Italian  officers  as  too  much  even  for 
caricature.  About  the  middle  of  October  I  visited 
the  positions  west  of  the  town  along  with  the  American 
Consul  and  two  English  correspondents.  We  saw 
through  our  glasses  a  suspicious-looking  column  of 
smoke  rising  from  a  part  of  the  desert  which  we 
believed  to  be  unoccupied,  but  none  of  the  officers 
noticed  it  until  we  drew  their  attention  to  it.  Later 
on,  the  whole  line  fell  back  when  some  camels  and 
natives  appeared  on  the  edge  of  the  horizon,  and 
we  heard  an  officer  asking  his  men  how  much  am- 
munition they  had  got ! 

The  Italian  army,  then,  is  very  raw  indeed.  More- 
over, being  a  conscript  army,  it  is  not  at  all  as  fitted 
to  operate  abroad  as  the  British  army  or  the  French 
colonial  troops.  These  things  had  their  effect  in 
producing  the  panic  of  October  23rd  and  the  slaughter 
that  followed.  Some  importance  must  also  be 
attached  to  the  fact  that,  like  General  Caneva,  the 
majority  of  the  higher  officers  seem  much  too  old 
and  fatigued  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  soldiers 
are,  as  a  rule,  very  young.  During  the  killing  of  the 
natives  on  October  26th  and  on  the  following  day 
I  never  saw  any  officer  of  higher  rank  than  lieutenant 
in  charge  of  the  parties  of  soldiers  who  carried  out 
this  work.  Once  I  saw  an  Italian  civilian  leading 
one  of  these  squads.  Sometimes  I  saw  private  soldiers 
out  hunting  for  Arabs  on  their  own  account.  All 
this  was  to  some  extent  due  to  the  absence  of  super- 
vision, to  the  rawness  and  inexperience  of  the  army, 
and  to  the  advanced  age  of  the  senior  officers.  Some 
killing  of  innocent  people  is  undoubtedly  indulged  in 
by  the  French,  German,  Russian,  and  even  English 


LESSONS  OF  THE  GREAT  PANIC       173 

armies  when  they  are  engaged  in  savage  warfare, 
but  in  such  warfare  the  higher  officers  keep  a  par- 
ticularly tight  rein,  not  only  on  their  soldiers,  but  on 
the  subordinate  officers  as  well.  During  the  march 
on  Peking  at  the  time  of  the  Boxer  troubles  the 
Russian  soldiers  frequently  got  out  of  hand,  but 
on  some  occasions  their  own  officers  placed  unruly 
men  against  a  wall  and  had  them  shot.  That  is 
what  General  Caneva  should  have  done  with  the 
soldiers  who  began  butchering  innocent  Arabs  on 
October  26th,  supposing,  of  course,  that  it  was  not 
General  Caneva  himself  who  ordered  the  butchery.^ 

I  have  already  pointed  out  how  very  excitable 
and  "  panicky "  is  the  Expeditionary  Army  in 
Tripolitania.  This  may  have  been  partly  due  to 
inexperience  and  partly  to  a  vague  feeling  that  things 
were  not  all  right  at  the  top.  For  as  a  horse  soon 
knows  what  kind  of  a  rider  he  has  on  his  back,  so 
an  army,  down  to  the  youngest  drummer-boy,  soon 

^  A  point  that  must  not  be  overlooked  in  this  connection  is  Italy's 
colossal  pre-eminence  in  assassination  as  compared  with  other  coun- 
tries. Her  murders  average  81 '2  for  every  million  inhabitants,  while 
the  corresponding  figure  for  England  is  only  3'1.  The  greatest  inter- 
national assassins  of  our  time  have  been  Italians — Santo,  GoUi, 
Luccheni,  Sipido,  Orsini,  Bresci. 

Another  point  is  the  mysterious,  violent  emotion,  almost  akin  to 
drunkenness,  which  the  sight  of  blood  causes  in  all  men,  and  more 
especially  in  Southern  Europeans.  Undoubtedly  the  tiger  sleeps  in 
most  of  us,  and  nothing  awakes  that  wild  beast  so  surely  and  so 
quickly  as  the  sight  of  human  blood  spurting  from  hundreds  of 
arteries  cut  by  bullets  or  by  bayonets.  On  this  point  the  reader 
should  see  my  chapters  on  "The  Burning  of  the  Bedouin  Village" 
and  "The  'Purging'  of  the  Oasis."  First  there  is  a  disagreeable 
sensation,  then  exquisite  shudderings,  then  a  fascination,  finally  a 
distinct  and  horrible  pleasure  in  witnessing  pain.  All  history,  and 
especially  the  histories  of  the  Roman  emperors  and  of  the  Turkish 
sultans,  bears  witness  to  the  awful  and  humiliating  fact  that  we  have 
within  us  a  blood-lust  which  probably  comes  from  savage,  perhaps 
even  from  cannibal,  ancestors,  and  which  soon  masters  us  if  allowed  a 
little  indulgence.  Every  one  who  has  read  of  the  Roman  amphitheatre, 
or  who  has  witnessed  even  a  Spanish  bull-fight,  will  understand  what 
I  mean.  This  horrible  and  mysterious  weakness  of  mankind  has  been 
recently  touched  upon  by  Sir  E.  Ray  Lankester,  k.c.b.,  f.r.s. 


174        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR  A  DESERT 

knows  what  kind  of  a  Commander-in-chief  it  has 
got.  But  this  "  panicky  "  feeling  was  principally- 
due  to  temperament,  the  greater  proportion  of  the 
troops  being  drawn  from  the  excitable  population 
of  Sicily  and  Southern  Italy.  Here,  again,  you  have 
another  cause  contributing  to  a  state  of  things  which 
made  the  sad  events  of  October  26th  possible.  To 
give  you  an  idea  of  how  "jumpy  "  the  Italian  soldiers 
are,  I  need  only  mention  the  fact  that  there  is  an 
alarm  every  night  along  the  fringe  of  the  Desert. 
Sentinels  fire  at  dogs,  at  bats,  and  at  wholly  imaginary 
objects  until  they  rouse  the  whole  camp,  and  firing 
goes  on  for  hours.  Once,  when  a  number  of  Italian 
officers  went  out  into  the  Desert  towards  nightfall, 
their  men  blazed  away  at  them  under  the  impression 
that  they  were  Arabs  ;  and  the  officers  had  to  remain 
out  in  the  Desert  all  night,  lying  flat  on  the  sand. 
In  order  to  prevent  this  incessant  waste  of  ammuni- 
tion and  this  deprivation  of  sleep  for  the  soldiers, 
the  Italians  had  to  place  powerful  naval  search- 
lights along  the  edge  of  the  Desert.  Each  light  is 
kept  swinging  backwards  and  forwards,  and  if  it  is 
kept  too  long  at  any  one  point  the  sentinels  at  some 
other  point  which  is  left  in  darkness  are  sure  to  begin 
firing  at  some  bogey  or  other.  Then  the  light  is 
swung  round  to  the  threatened  point,  and  the  sentinels 
there  are  as  happy  as  a  nervous  child,  frightened  of 
the  dark,  when,  in  order  to  still  its  shrieking,  mother 
brings  a  lighted  candle  into  the  room.  This  nervous- 
ness is  sometimes  a  more  serious  matter.  On  October 
26th  I  saw  one  party  of  soldiers  who  were  marching 
along  the  Bumeliana  road,  fire  on  another  party  of 
Italian  soldiers  who  were  hunting  for  Arabs  in  a 
palm-garden  far  inside  the  lines,  and  whom  the  party 
on  the  road  mistook  for  the  enemy.    The  firing  con- 


LESSONS  OF  THE  GREAT  PANIC       175 

tinned  for  a  long  time  ;  there  were  no  officers  of 
higher  rank  than  Heutenant  on  the  spot,  and  I  feared 
very  much  that  the  men  at  the  front,  thinking  the 
enemy  had  got  in  their  rear,  would  rush  back  into 
the  town  and  that  an  awful  catastrophe  would 
occur. 


CHAPTER    V 

THE  EXECUTION   OF  THE   GERMAN   CAVASS 

During  the  height  of  the  panic  on  October  23rd,  a 
soldier  of  the  5th  Artillery  was  attacked  near  the 
German  Consulate  by  a  group  of  Arabs.  He  fell 
beneath  their  blows  and,  while  he  lay  on  the  ground 
somebody  stabbed  him.  The  news  soon  spread,  and 
two  carabinieri  who  happened  to  be  in  the  vicinity 
rushed  to  the  spot.  They  made  inquiries  of  the 
Arabs  in  the  square,  and  some  time  afterwards  they 
arrested  a  young  Arab  called  Hussein,  second  cavass 
of  the  German  Consul,  Dr.  von  Tilger.  Hussein  was 
a  Fezzani  and  as  the  Fezzanis  are  Mussulmans  of  a 
peculiarly  fierce  breed,  this  fact  told  against  him 
from  the  outset. 

First  the  Italian  authorities  had  the  Consulate 
surrounded  by  troops.  On  learning  that  Dr.  Tilger, 
the  Consul,  was  not  at  home  but  on  board  a  German 
ship  leaving  with  Turkish  refugees,  mostly  women,  for 
Constantinople,  the  officer  in  charge  of  the  party 
applied  to  Signor  Galli,  formerly  Italian  Vice-Consul 
in  Tripoli,  now  head  of  the  Civil  Government.  Signor 
Galli  informed  Dr.  Tilger  of  what  had  occurred, 
whereupon  the  Consul  came  ashore  and,  after  a 
hurried  investigation,  handed  over  Hussein  to  the 
Italian  authorities.  Dr.  Tilger  and  Consul  Galli  had 
long  been  enemies  and  the  Italian,  who  knew  how 
deeply  attached  his  colleague  was  to  all  his  servants, 

176 


EXECUTION  OF  THE  GERMAN  CAVASS     177 

remarked  with  a  bitter  laugh  as  he  left  the  Consulate  : 
"  To-morrow,  doctor,  I  shall  send  you  a  death 
certificate." 

The  principal  witnesses  against  the  cavass  were — 

(1)  His  own  brother,  who  had  seen  him  in  the 
crowd  when  the  artillery-man  was  struck  down  ; 

(2)  A  native  child  who  had  seen  him  bending  over 
the  prostrate  body  of  the  soldier  ;   and 

(3)  A  dagger  which  was  found  concealed  in  the 
coal-cellar.  There  was  no  blood  on  the  dagger. 
The  cavass  said  that  it  belonged  to  him,  but  stoutly 
maintained  his  innocence.  No  blood  was  found  on 
the  cavass's  clothes. 

Some  German  correspondents  have  publicly  ac- 
cused their  Consul  of  feebleness  in  this  matter  and 
declared  that  the  trial  was  a  farce.  They  say  that 
the  judgment  of  the  Italians  was  unbalanced  owing 
to  their  panic  and  their  thirst  for  blood,  that  the 
Consul  should  have  tried  the  case  himself.  As  to 
Hussein's  innocence  or  guilt,  I  cannot  venture  to 
express  an  opinion.  Nor  can  I  say  whether  the 
Consul  could,  during  the  prevalence  of  martial  law, 
have  insisted  on  exercising  his  extraterritorial  rights. 

Owing,  however,  to  the  fact  that  Hussein  had 
been  an  employee  of  the  German  Empire  and  had 
worn  the  German  Eagle  on  his  fez,  the  Italians  made 
his  trial  a  very  imposing  affair.  It  was  held  in  the 
public  street  on  October  24th,  and  was  conducted 
with  the  utmost  pomp  and  circumstance.  The 
Italian  photographers  took  many  photographs  of  it, 
and  I  have  since  seen  those  photographs  reproduced 
in  the  notorious  "  New  York  American  "  as  proof 
that  there  was  no  massacre  of  Arabs  in  Tripoli,  that 
all  the  Arabs  were  tried  with  the  greatest  care.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  this  was  almost  the  only  case  in 

N 


178         ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

which  there  was  any  serious  pretence  at  a  regular 
trial.  Probably,  the  millionaire  proprietor  of  the 
"  American  "  has  an  eye  on  getting  the  Italian  vote 
when  he  next  stands  jfor  the  Governorship  of  New 
York.  In  any  case,  the  Bedouins  of  the  Desert  do 
not  advertise  in  the  "  American  "  and  do  not  even 
subscribe  to  it,  while  the  Italian  Colony  in  New  York 
does  both. 

To  return,  however,  to  the  case  of  Hussein.  At 
half-past  four  in  the  afternoon  he  was  brought  before 
a  military  court  which  sat  in  the  public  street  between 
the  Gendarmery  Office  and  the  old  citadel  of  Charles 
the  Fifth,  close  to  the  sea.  A  table  and  two  chairs  had 
been  placed  in  the  street.  On  the  table  were  an 
inkpot,  pens,  and  large  sheets  of  legal-looking  paper, 
partly  written  over  and  with  wide  margins  on  the  left. 
On  the  chairs  sat  two  high  officers,  elderly  men  with 
grey  moustaches  and  well-fitting  uniforms  covered 
with  brilliant  lace.  Small  bars  of  blue,  yellow,  and 
green  cloth,  sewn  horizontally  to  the  breasts  of 
their  tunics  on  the  left-hand  side,  indicated  that 
they  were  entitled,  if  they  pleased,  to  wear  various 
decorations.  They  wore  their  hats  and  swords  as 
they  sat ;  they  also  wore  the  calmly  assured  and 
superior  air  of  persons  who  represent  civilisation, 
human  society,  the  established  order  of  things  here 
below,  not  to  speak  of  a  Higher  Power  above.  One 
would  never  have  suspected  from  the  dignified  and 
deliberate  movements  of  those  cultured,  well-pre- 
served, highly  respectable  old  gentlemen  that  they 
were  the  murderers,  the  buccaneers,  that  there  on 
the  sands  of  Northern  Africa  they  represented  nothing 
but  the  gin-shop,  the  brothel,  the  gambling-hell, 
and  the  devil. 

Around  them  stood  a  battalion  of  the  1st  Regiment 


EXECUTION  OF  THE  GERMAN  CAVASS     179 

of  Engineers.  Those  soldiers  formed  a  hollow  square, 
and  in  the  centre  of  that  square  were  the  prisoners, 
each  standing  between  two  armed  men.  They  were 
six  or  seven  in  all,  and  foremost  among  them  was 
Hussein.  He  was  a  beardless  youth  of  eighteen 
years  of  age,  dark-complexioned  as  befitted  a  Fezzani 
Arab,  but  with  a  pleasing  and  almost  handsome  face. 
His  features  were  regular  and  perfectly  European, 
his  eye  very  bright  and  dark.  Unlike  the  majority 
of  the  Fezzani  Arabs,  he  was  only  about  five  feet 
five  in  height  and  as  slimly  built  as  a  girl.  He  was 
draped  from  head  to  foot  in  a  snow-white  djellaba. 
The  hood  went  over  his  head,  concealing  his  red  fez 
and  his  hair. 

The  young  man  looked  his  "  judges  "  in  the  face 
with  a  perfectly  composed  and  fearless  air,  and  he 
made  no  confession  and  no  comment  on  the  judicial 
proceedings  that  went  on  before  him.  Once  or  twice 
he  even  smiled,  and  the  smile  disclosed  two  rows  of 
small,  even  teeth,  very  white. 

The  evidence  against  him  was  translated  piece- 
meal by  the  interpreter.  Hussein  listened,  and 
always  replied  :  "I  have  understood,  but  it  is  not  so." 

The  atto  d'  istruzione  was  read  and  the  declarations 
of  the  witnesses.  Then  the  accused  was  questioned. 
He  said  that  he  had  only  left  the  Consulate  out  of 
curiosity  in  order  to  see  what  the  tumult  was  about. 

In  short,  he  denied  everything,  "  but,"  says  an 
unfriendly  writer  who  describes  the  scene,  "  he  de- 
nied without  protesting,  in  few  phrases,  and  with  a 
collected,  almost  dignified  bearing." 

Then  the  witnesses  were  called.  One  of  them  was 
an  Arab  girl  of  thirteen  years  old.  After  that. 
Captain  Chiappiroli,  the  advocate  for  the  Prosecution, 
said  a  few  words.    Captain  Senator  Carafa  d'  Andria, 


180        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR   A   DESERT 

the  advocate  for  the  defence,  also  made  a  few  banal 
remarks. 

The  prisoner  had  now  been  standing  erect  before 
his  judges  for  a  full  hour.  He  had  stood  all  that 
time  without  a  muscle  twitching  in  his  face,  without 
his  betraying  any  symptom  of  fatigue,  of  fear,  or 
even  of  interest.  When  the  sentence  was  read  to  him 
he  said,  "  I  have  understood,  but  it  is  not  just." 

The  judge  was  sparing  of  words. 

"  Death  !     Remove  the  prisoner  !  " 

To  the  surprise  of  the  Italians,  the  condemned  man 
did  not  seem  in  the  least  concerned.  Even  when  the 
translator  told  him  that  he  would  be  at  once  shot 
he  failed  to  exhibit  the  least  alarm. 

"  Death  !  Remove  the  prisoners  !  "  Behind 
Hussein  stood  the  other  prisoners,  five  of  whom  were 
slim  young  Arabs  like  himself.  Their  heads  also  were 
carefully  covered.  Their  clothes,  however,  were 
mean  and  ragged.  They  were  poor,  town  Arabs. 
The  sixth  was  an  Arab  from  the  Desert,  a  powerfully 
built  old  man,  six  feet  in  height  and  with  an  extra- 
ordinarily striking  face.  It  was  the  face  of  a  rebel, 
of  a  free,  defiant  man.  The  jaw  was  strong  and 
firm ;  the  eye  unwavering ;  the  mouth  and  the 
deep  lines  around  it  denoted  unusual  determination. 
The  head  was  bare,  and  all  the  hair  and  beard  seemed 
to  me  to  have  been  clipped  off,  prison-fashion,  so 
as  to  make  the  old  man  look  ridiculous.  It  had  the 
opposite  effect,  for  it  disclosed  a  nobly  shaped  cranium 
and  a  lower  face  which  might  have  belonged  to  an 
old  Cromwellian  trooper. 

Hussein  was  executed  within  half -an -hour  after 
sentence  was  pronounced.  The  place  of  execution 
was  an  open  space  by  the  sea,  in  front  of  the  Gen- 
darmery  Office  and  between  the  old  citadel  and  the 


EXECUTION  OF  THE  GERMAN  CAVASS     181 

military  club,  formerly  Turkish.  It  was  less  than 
a  hundred  feet  from  the  spot  where  sentence  had 
been  pronounced.  Right  under  the  lofty,  grey  walls 
of  the  ancient  Spanish  castle  is  a  semi-secluded 
corner  used  by  the  Italian  soldiery  as  a  latrine.  It 
is  filled  with  filth  and  excrement.  One  cannot  put 
one's  foot  in  a  clean  spot.  In  the  midst  of  this 
stinking  refuse-heap  was  placed  a  bale  of  compressed 
hay.  Seated  on  this  bale  Hussein  afterwards  met 
his  doom.  When  he  fell  off  he  rolled  in  the  foul- 
smelling  impurities  with  which  the  ground  was 
polluted. 

After  sentence  was  pronounced  the  soldiers  led  the 
condemned  man  into  the  Gendarmery  building. 
Meanwhile  a  file  of  eight  men  of  the  engineers  were 
drawn  up  within  twenty  paces  of  the  aforesaid  bale 
of  hay.  They  were  under  the  command  of  Lieu- 
tenant Vercelli,  at  whose  order  they  loaded  their 
weapons  and  stood  ready,  facing  the  citadel  wall, 
and  at  right  angles  to  another  line  of  soldiers  parallel 
to  the  sea.  Behind  this  latter  line  surged  a  crowd 
of  correspondents  and  officers.  Most  of  the  corre- 
spondents and  some  of  the  officers  had  their  cameras 
levelled.  All  of  them  had  cigarettes  in  their  mouths. 
There  was  a  big  cinematograph  installed  in  a  pro- 
minent position.  There  were  laughing  and  light- 
hearted  joking.  The  officer  in  charge  of  the  pro- 
ceedings was  a  large,  soft,  goose-like  man  with 
moustaches  turned  up  and  toes  turned  in.  He  went 
about  twirling  a  cane  and  looking  like  a  musical 
conductor.  He  knew  that  the  cinematograph  was 
just  about  to  make  a  "hero"  of  him,  and  that  there 
would  be  uproarious  applause  from  all  patriots  and 
right-minded  men  whenever  his  figure  was  thrown 
on  the  screen  anywhere  from  Syracuse  to  Chiasso. 


182        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR  A   DESERT 

Suddenly  a  movement  was  observed  in  the  crowd. 
It  was  the  prisoner  Hussein  and  his  guards  coming 
through.  Hussein  was  paraded  about  so  that  his 
fate  might  inspire  terror.  But,  unfortunately,  though 
all  this  parade  of  justice  took  place  in  the  open  street, 
for  the  exclusive  benefit  of  the  Arabs,  not  a  single 
Arab  spectator  attended  the  trial  or  the  execution. 
The  only  natives  present  were  local  Jews. 

If  any  Touaregs,  Fezzanis,  or  other  desert  Arabs 
had  been  present,  I  am  afraid  that  the  fearless  and 
proud  bearing  of  this  youth  would  have  had  a  harden- 
ing effect  on  them  rather  than  anything  else.  For 
even  the  Italians  were  impressed  by  this  exhibition 
of  splendid  fearlessness.  They  were  amazed  that  the 
condemned  man  cammina  tranquillo  (walks  calmly), 
that  he  did  not  lose  his  self-possession,  not  even  in 
the  last  moment — neanche  nel  momento  estremo. 

Hussein  was  led  towards  the  bale  of  hay.  He 
turned  back  once  and  looked  towards  the  soldiers 
who  composed  the  firing-party.  "  Guarda  fredda- 
mente,"  says  an  Italian  writer  who  describes  the 
scene,  "  i  soldati  che  gli  sono  vicini  con  le  armi  gid 
pronte."  (He  coldly  regards  the  soldiers  who  are 
near  him  with  their  rifles  already  loaded.) 

He  may  by  this  time  have  recognised  them  all 
again  in  the  other  world.  The  Fezzanis  who  are 
fighting  out  in  the  desert  under  Nesciat  Bey  could 
have  been  trusted  to  see  to  that. 

Even  at  this  last  moment,  this  momento  estremo, 
there  was  not  a  tear  in  his  dark  Arab  eye,  not  a 
quiver  on  his  beardless  lip.  If  there  had  been  a  tear, 
dozens  of  jubilant  Italian  correspondents  would  have 
gloried  in  it,  dozens  of  hungry,  uplifted  cameras 
would  have  seized  upon  it.  There  were  two  soldiers 
on  each  side  of  the  condemned  man.    Sicilians,  and 


EXECUTION  OF  THE  GERMAN  CAVASS     183 

therefore  superstitious,  they  handled  him  carefully, 
even  gently,  as  if  he  had  been  an  infant  or  a  high- 
born signora.  The  mystery  of  Death  had  already 
enveloped  him.  Their  hate  had  been  swallowed  up 
in  awe.  They  timidly  and  reverently  indicated  that 
he  should  sit  do^vn  on  the  hay  with  his  face  turned 
towards  the  wall  and  his  back  towards  his  execu- 
tioners and  the  general  public.  It  had  been  ordered 
thus  inasmuch  as  to  be  shot  in  the  back  is,  by  Italian 
military  law,  the  punishment  of  a  traditore  (traitor). 
How  it  had  come  to  pass  that  this  free  Fezzani  was 
a  traitor  to  the  King  of  Italy  has  not,  however,  been 
explained. 

It  was  a  weird,  ghostly  figure  which  sat  there, 
shrouded  entirely  in  white,  the  lower  limbs  invisible, 
the  head  still  covered  by  the  pointed  hood.  The 
figure  was  perfectly  erect,  and  as  motionless  as  one 
of  the  Roman  statues  in  the  ex-Turkish  Club  close  by. 

There  were  two  soldiers  on  each  side  of  him.  They 
suddenly  drew  down  the  white  hood  or  haraccano 
so  that  it  entirely  concealed  his  red  fez  and  his  face. 
The  figure  seated  on  the  bale  of  hay  was  now  hardly 
human.  The  eyes,  the  face,  the  hands,  nothing 
could  be  seen.  As  soon  as  the  soldiers  had  drawn 
down  the  hood  they  fled  swiftly  away,  a  pair  to  the 
right,  a  pair  to  the  left.  They  fled  with  fearsome 
haste  as  if  from  an  already  disembodied  spirit. 

A  sharp  order  from  the  Lieutenant,  and  the  soldiers 
levelled  their  rifles.  Another  sharp  order — Fuoco  ! — 
and  eight  shots  rang  out  as  one.  The  white  figure 
remained  perfectly  motionless  and  erect.  Every 
shot  had  missed.    And  at  twenty  paces  ! 

Did  some  thought  of  escape  not  occur  to  the  Arab 
at  this  moment  ?  Out  beyond  lay  an  unequalled 
panorama  of  sunlit  sea  and  land,  inviting  to  freedom 


184        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

and  pleasure  and  lusty  life.  In  the  wind  from  the 
desert  the  fronds  of  the  palm-trees  waved  like  the 
plumes  of  cavalry.  Yonder,  in  the  green  oasis,  many 
of  his  friends  were  hidden.  On  the  white  sea-shore 
of  Sharashett  the  glorious  free  sea  broke.  Midway 
it  danced  in  a  thousand  dimples.  Nay,  within  a  few 
feet  of  where  the  condemned  man  sat,  the  Medi- 
terranean lapped  the  low  embankment. 

Between  him  and  that  heaving,  deep  blue  sea 
there  was  absolutely  no  obstacle.  "  Up  !  Run  ! 
Throw  yourself  into  the  waves  !  Swim  for  it !  There 
is  yet  a  chance  !  " 

There  can  be  nothing  in  telepathy,  for  though 
these  words  beat  violently  against  the  walls  of  my 
brain  like  imprisoned  eagles  beating  against  window- 
bars,  the  condemned  man  sat  as  still  as  death.  His 
legs  were  free,  but  his  hands  were  tied  behind  his  back, 
and  he  could  not  withdraw  the  baraccano  which 
covered  his  face  down  to  the  chin.  But  what  an 
effect  it  would  have  had  on  the  Arabs  if  he  had  even 
risen  to  his  feet  and  died  with  his  face  to  the  firing- 
party  and  on  his  lips  the  terrible  war-cry  of  Islam  : 
"  La  ilaha  illa-llahu  Mohammed  rasulu  'llah  ("  There 
is  no  God  but  God,  and  Mohammed  is  the  Prophet  of 
God  !  "),  the  war-cry  which  his  race  had  carried  from 
their  home  in  the  Arabian  desert,  along  the  coast  of 
Northern  Africa  to  Tangier,  through  Spain  from 
Gibraltar  to  the  Pyrenees,  into  the  heart  of  France 
as  far  as  Poitiers. 

Fuoco !  Another  order.  Another  volley.  The 
white  figure  fell  over  slowly,  gently — ^fell  to  the 
ground  on  its  left  side. 

"  He  died  like  a  young  martyr,"  says  one  Italian 
author  who  describes  the  scene,  "  and  yet  he  died 
with  a  lie  on  his  lips." 


EXECUTION  OF  THE  GERMAN  CAVASS     185 

Who  but  God  can  say  that  ?  He  may  have  been 
innocent.  The  Italians  have  made  many  mistakes 
since  they  came  to  TripoH.  This  also  may  very  well 
have  been  one.  I  would  not  have  liked,  had  I  been 
an  Arab,  to  have  been  tried  for  my  life  by  men  as 
panic-stricken,  as  mad  with  racial  hate,  as  were  the 
Italian  leaders  in  Tripoli  on  October  24th. 

But  if  he  is  innocent,  practically  the  whole  world 
is  banded  together  to  maintain  his  guilt.  The 
Italians  naturally  contend  that  he  is  a  murderer. 
So  do  most  of  the  foreigners,  as  otherwise  it  would 
be  rather  awkward  for  Dr.  Tilger.  One  of  the  Consuls 
— not  Dr.  Tilger — assured  me  that  Hussein  had 
confessed,  but  I  afterwards  found  that  this  was  not 
the  case. 

The  white,  ghostly  figure  tumbled  over  without 
a  moan,  without  a  cry,  without  a  syllable.  There 
was  absolute  silence.  One  leg  twitched  feebly.  A  man 
in  a  black  uniform,  a  military  doctor,  advanced 
hastily,  bent  over  the  prostrate  body,  raised  his 
hand,  said  something  in  Italian,  and  stepped  briskly 
back.  Then  an  odd  thing  occurred.  The  first  cavass 
of  the  German  Consulate  and  another  Arab  of  the 
same  institution  were  present,  and  had  brought  with 
them  the  prisoner's  dog.  It  was  a  ludicrous,  effusive 
retriever,  with  black  curly  hair  which  had  been  closely 
clipped  everywhere  save  around  the  neck  and  at 
the  tip  of  the  tail.  Somebody  had  evidently  tried 
to  make  the  poor  animal  look  like  a  lion,  but  had 
only  succeeded  in  making  it  look  ridiculous. 

As  soon  as  the  second  volley  had  been  fired,  this 
foolish,  exuberant  dog  rushed  forward  and  began 
jumping  around  the  corpse,  sniffing  at  it  and  then 
bounding  suddenly  back,  frisking  around,  wagging 
its  tail  and  contorting  its  body.    But  it  never  barked 


186        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

once,  and  it  never  actually  touched  the  recumbent 
figure. 

The  soldiers  did  not  want  to  kill  this  dog.  They 
whistled  at  it  and  tried  to  coax  it  away.  But  it 
would  not  desert  its  master,  and,  despite  its  presence, 
the  soldiers  finally  began  an  indiscriminate  fire  at 
the  prostrate  mummy-like  figure  on  the  ground. 
Happily  the  dog  was  not  hit.  The  executioners  took 
special  pains  to  avoid  it.  It  was  the  man  they  were 
aiming  at.  Thirty  shots  in  all  were  fired,  counting 
the  two  volleys.  After  a  few  minutes  of  the  indis- 
criminate firing,  the  man  in  the  black  uniform 
advanced  again  along  with  several  others  in  the 
same  garb.  They  were  policemen  or  gendarmes. 
One  of  them  had  a  red-cross  badge  on  his  arm.  This 
man  felt  the  pulse  of  the  figure  on  the  ground,  after- 
wards letting  the  lifeless  arm  fall  back  limply.  Then 
the  leading  policeman  put  a  revolver  to  the  head  and 
fired  two  shots. 

At  the  same  instant  there  rang  out  what  seemed  to 
be  a  distant,  gigantic  echo  of  the  pistol-shots. 
Another !  Another !  Another !  All  eyes  were 
turned  towards  the  blue  sea  and  the  sunlit  strip  of 
yellowish,  sandy  coast  eastward  of  the  Sharashett 
fort. 

In  the  water  lay  the  war-vessel  Sicilia.  Inland 
from  the  fort  four  fleecy,  brown  clouds  of  shrapnel 
hung  over  the  land  at  a  point  from  which  came  a 
crackling  of  rifle-fire.  Hussein's  friends  had  already 
begun  to  take  their  revenge. 

The  execution  of  Hussein  was  not  the  first  execution 
which  had  taken  place  that  day.  Six  men  had  been 
shot  at  eight  o'clock  that  morning  at  the  School  of 
Arts,  while  other  prisoners — 300  in  number — had  been 
forced  to  assist  at  the  ceremony.     The  condemned 


EXECUTION  OF  THE  GERMAN  CAVASS     187 

men  were  placed  against  a  wall  in  the  court-yard  and 
a  file  of  soldiers  was  drawn  up  in  front  of  them. 
There  was  a  profound  silence,  while  an  interpreter 
read  the  sentence  of  death  from  a  rostrum.  He  cried 
out  in  a  loud  voice  and  in  the  Arabic  language.  When 
he  came  to  the  name  of  the  King  of  Italy  at  the  end 
of  the  document  the  Italians  present  applauded,  and 
so  did  one  of  the  condemned  men.  This  man  raised 
his  manacled  hands  and  beat  one  palm  against  the 
other  while  he  pronounced  in  a  guttural  voice  the 
name  of  King  Victor  Emmanuel. 

He  may  have  lost  his  senses  or  he  may  have 
ingenuously  supposed  that  this  demonstration  would 
save  him.  It  did  not,  of  course.  He  was  shot,  a 
moment  afterwards,  with  the  other  five. 


CHAPTER    VI 

THE   OASIS  OF   DEATH 

On  the  night  of  October  23rd  Tripoli  was  more 
nervous,  speechless,  and  panic-stricken  than  Port 
Arthur  on  the  eve  of  Togo's  first  onslaught,  or 
Constantinople  the  night  before  Mahmud  Shefket 
Pasha  stormed  that  city. 

Being  convinced  that  every  Arab  was  an  enemy, 
and  being  dreadfully  alarmed  at  the  risk  they  had 
run  of  losing  the  city,  the  Italians  sent  around  Arab 
criers  to  cry  out  warnings  and  death-penalties  enough 
to  make  one's  blood  run  cold.  Each  crier  wore  a 
special  native  costume  of  some  ceremonial  signifi- 
cance, and  was  accompanied  by  an  Italian  official 
and  two  armed  soldiers.  The  criers  stopped  every 
hundred  yards  or  so  and  shouted  out  the  proclama- 
tion at  the  top  of  their  voices  in  some  irregular  kind 
of  chant. 

"  Chi  non  consegna  subito  iutte  le  armi  e  le  munizioni 
alle  autorita  sera  fusilato."  (Whoever  does  not  at 
once  surrender  to  the  authorities  any  arms  and 
ammunition  which  he  may  have  in  his  possession 
will  be  shot.) 

The  natives  were  also  told  that  they  must  be  in- 
doors before  sunset,  and  must  not  appear  on  the 
street  during  the  night  on  pain  of  being  shot.  Any 
one  who  did  not  halt  when  a  sentinel  said  "  Chi  va 
Id  ?  "  (Who  goes  there  ?)  would  be  instantly  fired 
on.    All  lights  were  to  be  extinguished. 


THE   OASIS   OF   DEATH  189 

I  strolled  out,  after  supper,  on  the  Marina,  or  sea- 
front  street,  and  found  the  city  like  a  cemetery. 
Not  a  native  was  in  sight  save  a  number  of  boot- 
blacks, street-sweepers,  beggars,  and  other  homeless 
wanderers  who  slept  inside  some  railings  in  front  of 
the  houses.  Wrapped  in  their  white  garments  and 
packed  closely  together,  they  looked  like  shrouded 
corpses  awaiting  burial.  Whether  asleep  or  not, 
they  were  certainly  as  still  as  dead  men.  They  were 
afraid  even  to  move.  Patrols  of  soldiers  and  sailors 
swung  along  the  street  every  few  minutes.  My  old 
friend,  the  Censor,  was  accompanied  by  a  soldier 
with  a  rifle.  Two  officers  who  passed  me  were  ac- 
companied by  armed  soldiers  ;  and,  in  addition  to 
that,  they  themselves  had  revolvers  in  their  hands 
and  had  their  fingers  on  the  triggers.  Every  officer 
was  accompanied  at  this  time  by  an  armed  soldier, 
probably  because  a  story  had  reached  the  Head- 
quarters staff  that  an  attempt  would  be  made  to 
suddenly  assassinate  all  the  Italian  officers  in  the 
city. 

For  the  next  few  days  no  Italian,  military  or  civil, 
passed  a  native  in  the  bazaar  or  the  street,  even  in 
broad  daylight,  without  putting  his  hand  on  a  con- 
cealed weapon  and  preparing  against  the  eventuality 
of  the  other  springing  on  him  with  a  knife.  There 
was  absolutely  no  reason  for  all  these  precautions 
against  the  peaceful  town  Arabs  ;  but  the  plain  fact 
remained  that  the  Italians  were  working  themselves 
into  a  condition  almost  of  insanity  on  the  subject  of 
the  natives. 

There  was  not  a  light  on  shore.  Cafes,  shops, 
hotels  had  all  been  closed.  But  the  sea-front  was 
illuminated  every  few  moments  by  the  sinister  flash 
of  the  search-lights  on  the  battle-ships.     Far  away, 


190        ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

along  the  sea-shore  burned  huge  fires — the  straw  and 
thatch  and  wood-work  of  native  houses  which  had 
been  wrecked  and  then  set  ablaze. 

There  was  intense  stillness,  broken  occasionally 
by  revolver  or  rifle  shots,  sometimes  close  by,  some- 
times in  the  heart  of  the  town,  sometimes  out  in  the 
oasis.  Occasionally  there  was  a  hoarse  cry,  then 
perfect  silence  as  before.  If  the  town  was  thus  in- 
tolerable, the  palm -gardens  outside  were  a  horror, 
for  they  were  black  as  the  grave  and  littered  with 
corpses.  It  was  not  safe  for  any  one,  friend  or  foe, 
to  approach  any  of  the  innumerable  sentinels  who 
now  studded  the  oasis.  Every  hundred  yards  or  so,  a 
sharp,  strained  "  Chi  i;a  Za  ,^  "  or  "  Chi  sono,  signori  ?  " 
(if  a  group  of  officers  approached),  would  bring  one 
up  with  a  jerk. 

Even  for  an  Italian  civilian,  a  promenade  in  the 
oasis  on  this  particular  night  was  fraught  with 
danger.  Despite  his  enthusiasm  for  the  war  and  for 
the  army,  the  Honourable  De  Felice,  an  Italian 
deputy,  had  the  muzzle  of  a  sentry's  rifle  pressed 
against  his  stomach  when  he  went,  this  night,  to  visit 
Sharashett. 

"  Easy,  easy  !  "  he  shrieked.  "  Lower  your  rifle  ! 
Don't  you  see  that  we  are  not  Turks  ?  " 

"  Our  men  were  assassinated  to-day  by  civilians," 
was  the  frenzied  reply,  "  Indietro,  dunque,  o  noi 
facciamo  fuoco  !  "    (Back,  then,  or  we  shall  fire  !) 

And  certainly  the  sentinels  could  be  excused  for 
feeling  nervous.  The  smell  of  war  filled  the  air. 
Horses  bringing  officers  through  the  oasis  stopped 
frequently  with  snorts  of  fear.  The  stoppage  was 
always  caused  by  corpses.  In  all  attitudes  of  agony, 
Arabs  lay  dead  in  the  sand.  Sometimes  their  white 
robes  were  stained  with  blotches  of  red.    Sometimes 


THE   OASIS   OF   DEATH  191 

their  heads  rested  in  a  pool  of  blood.  Sometimes  the 
horses  caught  sight  of  snow-white  bodies  lying 
motionless  in  a  thicket — the  naked  bodies  of  Italian 
soldiers  not  yet  collected  by  the  ambulances.  Some- 
times one  came  across  groups  of  five  or  six  Arabs 
bound  together  and  about  to  be  shot.  In  all  proba- 
bility they  had  been  burned  out  of  their  houses,  and 
had  hidden  in  the  thicket.  But  the  thicket  hap- 
pened to  be  in  the  rear  of  the  Italian  line.  "  Caught 
under  suspicious  circumstances,  in  close  proximity 
to  our  line,"  is  the  charge.  "  Fuoco  !  "  (Fire  !)  shouts 
the  Lieutenant  dryly,  and  all  is  over. 

Crouched  together  in  the  trenches,  the  Italian 
soldiers  horrified  one  another  and  exchanged  the 
most  blood-curdling,  "  camp-gup "  stories  about 
African  campaigns.  The  word  Africa  has  certainly 
an  ominous  sound  in  Italian  ears.  The  shame  and 
the  disgrace  of  Adowa  has  never  been  fully  set  forth 
in  print  and  is  never  likely  to  be,  but  the  conscripts 
of  Italy  know  all  about,  and  perhaps  even  exaggerate, 
its  horrors.  As  is  but  natural,  the  stories  told  of  it 
around  Italian  camp-fires  grow  more  thrilling  and 
more  gruesome  every  year.  The  shadow  of  that 
great  shame  hung  over  the  present  expedition  like  a 
ghost.  The  very  exuberance  of  the  Press,  and  the 
gridi  d'  entusiasmo  ("  cries  of  enthusiasm  ")  of  the 
people  were  merely  the  forced  gaiety  of  frightened 
children  trying  to  reassure  themselves  while  enter- 
ing a  dark  room  which  exhaled  tragedy. 

Vivn  I'  Italia  ! 

Viva  Tripoli  italiana  ! 

Viva  la  marina  ! 

Viva  P  esercito  ! 

Viva  U  Re  ! 

Viva  lafioUa  italiana  ! 


192        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR   A   DESERT 

Whenever  one  hears  this  litany — and  one  hears  it 
pretty  often  in  Italy  and  in  Tripoli — one  can  almost 
fancy  he  hears  after  every  exclamation  a  miserere 
nobis. 

For  the  Italians  are  groping  in  the  haunted  house 
like  helpless  children.  It  is  pitch  dark  there  and  the 
corpse  of  an  Arab  woman  lies  upstairs  with  its  throat 
cut ;  while,  from  time  to  time,  a  gibbering,  malignant 
spirit  curdles  their  blood  by  shrieking  the  one  word 
"  Adowa  !  " 

With  the  Italian  Press  it  is  the  same.  The  harping 
on  "  il  valor e  italiano,"  "  la  magnifica  condotta  delle 
truppe  "  (the  magnificent  conduct  of  the  troops),  is 
so  constant  that  it  only  betrays  anxiety. 

In  the  same  manner  the  intense  desire  of  the  Press 
to  cull  good  notices  of  the  Italian  army  and  navy 
from  foreigners  and  foreign  newspapers,  is  almost 
pathetic.  "  Tutta  Europa  ammira  il  valor e  dei  nostri 
marinai  e  dei  nostri  soldati  "  (All  Europe  admires 
the  valour  of  our  sailors  and  soldiers  !)  runs  one 
newspaper  heading.  "  Magnifica  testimonianzo  degli 
addetti  militari  esteri  sul  valor e  delle  truppe  italiane  " 
(Magnificent  testimonial  of  the  foreign  military 
attaches  on  the  valour  of  the  Italian  troops),  is 
another.  The  attaches  in  question  had  only  ex- 
changed a  few  polite  after-dinner  compliments  with 
the  officers  at  the  front. 

Arab  treachery  was  the  theme  around  every 
camp-fire  and  in  every  trench.  The  moral  of  every 
tale  told  was  that  no  trust  can  be  placed  in  an  Arab. 
"  La  leggendaria  impenetrabilitd  araba  "  was  insisted 
upon. 

You  might  hear  again,  as  in  Abyssinia,  the  pleasant 
talk  of  the  camp-fires,  about  mutilations  worse  than 
death  and  about  fiendish  native  crueltv.    The  Italians 


THE   OASIS   OF   DEATH  193 

seem  to  have  a  perfect  genius  for  getting  among 
people  of  whom  such  stories  can  be  told.  But  I  do 
hope  that  some  of  the  stories  were  fiction. 

During  the  course  of  the  battle  one  of  the  Bersag- 
lieri  had  suddenly  appeared  among  his  comrades,  who 
had  given  him  up  for  lost.  On  being  accused  of 
having  come  down  a  tree,  he  evolved  a  lurid  legend 
about  having  been  captured  and  carried  off  along  with 
six  others  by  an  overwhelming  force  of  Arabs.  When 
his  captors  had  reached  a  safe  spot  in  the  recesses  of 
the  oasis,  they  tied  the  seven  men  to  seven  trees 
and  mutilated  them,  one  after  the  other,  amid  a 
wild  mixture  of  dervish  dancing,  religious  rites,  and 
fiendish  laughter. 

As  is  the  invariable  rule  in  such  stories  he  happened 
to  be  the  last  of  the  seven,  but  his  explanation  of  his 
escape  was  rather  unsatisfactory  and  incoherent. 
But,  happily,  the  Italian  camp  was  full  of  clever 
literary  people,  and  a  satisfactory  conclusion  was 
soon  found  for  his  little  tale,  which  has  probably 
formed,  by  this  time,  the  subject  of  a  new  poem  by 
Gabriele  d'  Annunzio,  to  whose  peculiar  style  of 
genius  the  theme  is  exactly  suited. 

It  was  even  asserted  at  the  time  in  Tripoli,  and 
the  statement  was  published  afterwards  in  Italy, 
that  an  Arab  had  been  caught  running  through  the 
oasis  with  a  bag  filled  with  portions  of  Italian  flesh 
(Z)'  un  Arabo  che  fuggiva  con  brandelli  di  came  umana 
in  un  sacco).  Incidents  of  cannibalism  on  the  part 
of  the  enemy  were  furnished  by  other  Bersaglieri 
who  had  "  escaped." 

The  gloom  around  our  camp-fire  was  not  decreased 
when  a  superstitious  Sicilian  introduced  the  religious 
and  supernatural  element.  This  Sicilian  said  that  a 
Holy  War  had   been   proclaimed.     He   spoke   of   a 


194        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

strange  excitement  which  he  had  noticed  among  the 
Arabs  several  days  before.  A  wild  light  had  come 
into  all  their  eyes.  They  had  walked  like  hypnotic 
subjects.  There  had  been  weird,  unholy  rites  and 
chantings  in  the  mosques.  Some  of  them  had 
pointed  to  the  crescent  moon,  which  then  rode  high 
in  the  heavens,  as  a  sign  that  a  Turkish  victory  was 
imminent.  Others  had  mentioned  an  old  prophecy 
according  to  which  a  Christian  nation  would  come  to 
Tripoli  and  would  at  the  end  of  forty  days  be  ex- 
pelled amid  storms  and  tempests,  thunder  and 
lightning. 

Pleased  with  the  impression  he  had  made,  the 
Sicilian  went  on  to  speak  of  those  mysterious  Free- 
masons of  Islam,  the  Senussi,  whose  head-quarters 
are  at  Kufra  in  the  Egyptian  desert,  and  whose 
influence  extends  from  the  Nile  to  Morocco  and  far 
southward  into  the  unknown  heart  of  the  Dark 
Continent. 

The  Sicilians  habitually  spoke  of  the  enemy  as 
"  the  Saracens."  Terrible  legends  of  the  Saracen 
conquest  of  Sicily  tinged  their  minds,  perhaps  uncon- 
sciously. Various  theories  were  put  forward  to 
account  for  the  sudden  appearance  of  such  a  large 
body  of  Arabs  in  the  rear  of  the  Italian  line  at 
Sharashett,  and  the  theory  most  in  favour  was  that  a 
subterranean  passage  ran  between  Tripoli  and  the 
Turkish  camp.  Soldiers  told  how  Arabs  whom  they 
pursued  had  mysteriously  disappeared — undoubtedly 
fer  mezzo  di  una  escavazione  sotterranea. 

1  might  here  remark  that,  later  on,  this  story  of  a 
sotterranea  became  an  obsession,  not  only  with  the 
soldiers,  but  even  with  the  Italian  civilians  and  some 
of  the  officers.  It  was  said  that  Turkish  spies  con- 
stantly penetrated  in  this  way  into  the  town,  that 


THE   OASIS   OF  DEATH  195 

there  were  many  Arabs  underneath  the  earth,  that 
half  the  city  might  be  blown  up.  The  most  circum- 
stantial account  of  this  passage  was  given  to  the 
police  by  "  the  oldest  inhabitant,"  a  wise  Jew. 
Some  authorities  said  that  there  were  two  passages. 
One  of  those  passages  was  so  ample  that  four  men 
could  walk  abreast  in  it.  They  were  variously  said 
to  open  (1)  on  the  seashore  ;  (2)  in  the  centre  of 
Tripoli ;  (3)  in  the  oasis ;  (4)  in  the  Governor's  palace. 

Finally  the  authorities  became  seriously  alarmed, 
for  it  was  not  impossible  that  some  old  Roman  or 
mediaeval  passage  did  open  into  the  Castello  ;  and 
Lieutenant  Vicinanza  made  an  elaborate  search  for 
those  mythical  tunnels.  He  went  down  wells, 
entered  grottos,  tapped  walls  to  ascertain  if  they 
gave  forth  a  hollow  ring,  dug  in  cemeteries.  He 
questioned  Hassuna  Pasha,  the  present  representa- 
tive of  the  Karamanli  family,  which  had  long  ruled 
the  country  from  the  old  castle.  Hassuna  declared 
that  there  was  no  tunnel  underneath  the  castle,  and 
that  there  could  not  be  a  tunnel  because,  as  the  soil 
was  sandy  and  rich  in  water,  any  such  passage  would 
soon  collapse. 

But  in  spite  of  this,  enthusiasts  went  out  to  Gar- 
garesh  and  examined  every  suspected  point.  By 
this  time  the  foreign  correspondents  had  begun  to 
take  an  interest  in  the  matter  and  to  write  about  it. 
They  wrote  with  all  the  more  enthusiasm,  inasmuch 
as  this  was  the  one  and  only  subject  on  which  the 
Censor  allowed  them  a  free  hand. 

Arab  treachery  was  the  theme  of  innumerable 
stories.  The  moral  of  every  tale  was  that  no  trust 
can  ever  be  placed  in  an  Arab.  Under  the  influence 
of  religious  fanaticism,  he  is  capable  of  killing  his 
best  benefactor  if  that  benefactor  is  an  Unbeliever. 


196        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR   A   DESERT 

You  may  save  an  Arab  boy  from  death,  you  may 
feed  him,  clothe  him,  educate  him  ;  but  when  the 
Holy  War  is  declared  he  will  be  sure  to  stick  a  knife 
in  you. 

The  Italians  are  predisposed  to  this  form  of  pro- 
found distrust.  When,  before  the  bombardment, 
the  Consuls  considered  what  they  should  do  in  the 
event  of  a  native  rising  against  the  Europeans,  not 
improbable  at  that  time,  Vice-Consul  Galli  shocked 
his  colleagues  by  saying  that  what  he  would  do 
would  be  to  first  kill  his  Arab  cavass  and  then 
barricade  himself  with  his  Italian  friends  in  the 
Consulate.  Now,  that  old  cavass  had  been  in  the 
service  of  the  Consulate  for  years.  Those  who  have 
been  in  the  Near  East  will  understand  how  faithful 
such  old  servants  are,  and  how  ready  to  give  their 
lives  for  their  masters. 

Among  the  tales  of  Arab  treachery  which  were 
told  was  one  about  an  Arab  youth  employed  by  the 
Bersaglieri  officers,  who  thought  they  had  made 
quite  a  pet  of  him.  When,  in  the  morning,  the 
officers  prepared  to  fight  the  enemy,  the  youth  ap- 
proached a  captain  and  killed  him  with  a  dagger. 
He  was  instantly  shot. 

And  certainly  there  is  something  to  be  said  of  the 
Italian  private's  point  of  view  in  this  matter,  though 
nothing  can  excuse  the  mixture  of  massacre  and 
muddle  which  the  higher  military  and  civil  authori- 
ties made  of  the  campaign. 

The  privates  felt  that  they  had,  on  the  whole, 
treated  the  natives  with  friendliness.  They  had 
freely  shared  their  bread  and  cheese  with  the  little 
Arab  bimbo  who  had  stretched  out  its  hand  murmur- 
ing :    "  Italiano  bono,  mangeria.''' 

Sometimes  thev  had  bought  a  little  cotton  cloth 


*     THE   OASIS   OF  DEATH  197 

to  make  a  dress  for  the  small,  naked  boys.  They 
thought  that  they  had  established  relations  of  good- 
humoured  fraternity  with  the  parents  of  those  little 
mites.  The  friendly  smiles  of  the  fathers  seemed  to 
indicate  that  all  was  well.  The  Sicilian  soldier  was 
not  vexed  at  the  Arab  "  friendly  "  breaking  faith 
with  Rome.  He  was  vexed  at  the  Arab  breaking 
the  tacit  pact  with  him,  a  pact  sealed  by  many  grins 
and  handshakes. 

The  recollection  of  those  smiles,  of  that  cotton 
cloth,  of  that  bread,  now  made  the  Sicilian  furious. 
He  did  not  know  that  in  most  cases  the  people  who 
assailed  him  in  the  rear  were  not  oasis  Arabs,  were 
hostile  Arabs,  open  enemies  from  beyond  the  front. 
He  knew  or  heard  of  a  few  cases  of  treachery,  and 
that  was  enough  to  make  him  curse  the  whole  Arab 
race. 

The  Sicilian  soldier  had  heard  the  most  fantastic 
stories  of  Arab  cruelty  and  ferocity,  how  the  wounded 
and  even  the  dead  had  been  hacked  and  mutilated, 
how  bearers  who  went  to  pick  up  wounded  Turks 
had  been  shot  by  the  dying  men,  who  had  then 
breathed  out  their  life  in  a  last  deep  sigh  of  thankful- 
ness to  Allah.  He  had  heard  how  Bersaglieri  had 
been  found  in  the  thickets,  naked  and  crucified. 

Most  of  those  stories  were  fiction  or  at  least  exag- 
gerated, but  the  Sicilians  and  Neapolitans  believed 
them  and  passed  them  on,  amplified,  still  more 
horrible.  The  theatrical  instinct  of  the  southern 
Italian  had  full  play.  With  eloquent  gestures,  in 
torrents  of  words  he  described  "  il  dramma  sinistro 
delta  rivolta  e  della  rcprcssione  "  (the  sinister  drama 
of  the  revolt  and  of  the  repression). 

The  circumstances  under  which  those  stories  were 
told  added  to  their  impressiveness. 


198        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

The  night  was  as  black  as  Erebus  and,  in  a  state  of 
extreme  nervous  tension,  their  fingers  on  the  triggers 
of  their  rifles,  one  ear  sometimes  turned  sideways  to 
the  ground,  the  sentinels  seemed  to  listen  more  than 
to  watch.  The  movements  of  the  Arabs  along  the 
sand  during  the  course  of  the  past  battle  had  been 
so  snake-like  that  ears  were  needed  as  well  as  eyes  in 
order  to  detect  the  approach  of  the  enemy. 

Suddenly  a  sentinel  called  the  attention  of  his 
companions  to  a  strange  distant  noise.  It  was  the 
faint  roll  of  a  drum,  and  it  must  have  come  from 
some  point  far  out  in  the  desert. 

What  could  it  mean  ?  Was  it  a  signal  of  war  ? 
Was  it  the  accompaniment  of  some  devil-dance 
carried  out  by  savage  allies  whom  the  Mohammedans 
had  summoned  from  the  dark  heart  of  Africa  ? 

And  there  were  other  mysterious  signs.  In  the 
profundity  of  the  sandy  waste  a  light  distinctly 
gleamed  for  a  moment,  then  disappeared,  then  re- 
appeared, finally  went  out.  Moreover,  several  men 
saw,  or  fancied  they  saw,  a  comet,  very  faint,  in  the 
heavens. 

These  watchers  of  the  skies  were  disturbed  from 
time  to  time  by  soldiers  talking  in  their  sleep  around 
them.  One  murmured  the  name  of  a  woman,  one 
the  pet  name  of  a  child,  one  the  name  of  a  Sicilian 
village,  fair  as  a  dream  of  paradise. 

"  II  dramma  sinistro  della  rivolta  e  della  repressione.'' 
To  the  Sicilians,  however,  and  in  fact  to  every  one  in 
Tripoli  at  that  time,  including  the  Consuls  and  the 
foreign  business-men,  it  was  something  more  than  a 
mere  drama  that  was  being  enacted  before  them. 
"  Is  tragedy  again  to  dog  the  steps  of  the  Italian 
soldiers  in  Africa  ?  "  That  was  the  question  most 
people  asked  themselves  and  one  another  that  night. 


THE   OASIS   OF   DEATH  199 

The  breaking  of  Caneva's  line,  the  rear  attack, 
the  certainty  that  all  the  Arabs  were  now  on  the 
Turkish  side  were  very  serious  facts.  An  army  is  a 
great  animal  which  is  easily  panic-stricken,  and  the 
prospect  of  a  frightened  and  demoralised  soldiery 
rushing  pell-mell  into  Tripoli  and  making  for  the 
transports  was  one  that  did  not  appeal  to  the  average 
Esparto  Grass  merchant,  or  shipping  agent  in  the 
town.  He  had  come  out  to  make  money,  not  to  get 
skinned  alive.  ^ 

For  the  Italians  themselves,  the  events  of  the  day 
had  been  stunning.  The  very  ground  they  stood  on 
was  unsafe.  The  race  on  which  they  had  graciously 
decided  to  build  their  Colonial  Empire  had  slipped 
away  like  quicksand  from  underneath  their  founda- 
tion-stone. What  if  their  new,  untried  army  slipped 
away  also  ?  What  if  a  blacker  day  than  Adowa  was 
before  them  ? 

New  tales  of  cruelty  were  invented  round  the 
camp-fires,  and  by  morning  the  authors  honestly 
believed  in  those  stories  themselves.  Hence  an 
exaltation  of  mind  which  made  terrible  reprisals 
certain,  unless  the  officers  kept  their  men  well  under 
control.  Alas  !  the  officers  were  not  strong  enough 
to  exercise  that  control. 

"  Owing  to  the  helplessness  of  the  officers,"  wrote 
the  "  Frankfurter  Zeitung "  correspondent  a  few 
days  later,  "  a  wild  man-hunt  began." 

And  when  the  man-hunt  did  begin,  the  soldiers 

^  There  was  a  great  exodus  from  Tripoli,  and  those  who  remained 
made  ready  for  a  change  of  masters.  All  Turkish  coins  disappeared 
because  the  shopkeepers  hoarded  them  in  the  conviction  that  they 
would  come  in  handy  when  the  Turks  returned.  Von  Gottberg,  who 
lodged  with  a  Jew,  found  his  landlord  busily  occupied  in  brushing  and 
smoothing  the  old  Turkish  fez  which  he  had  replaced  by  an  Italian 
wide-awake  on  October  4th.  "  One  never  knows  what  may  happen," 
quoth  this  Hebrew  Vicar  of  Bray  in  answer  to  my  colleague's  look  of 
inquiry. 


200        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR  A   DESERT 

wrote  about  it  in  a  manner  which  shows  how  insane 
they  were  with  terror  and  rage.  In  letters  to  their 
sweethearts,  mothers,  and  brothers,  they  described 
the  cruel  extirpation  of  the  peaceful  Arabs  as  they 
would  have  described  the  extirpation  of  venomous 
serpents.  One  man  who  dates  his  letter  "  Tripoli, 
October  25th,"  and  who  writes  to  his  "  dear  Parents," 
begins  with  the  words  "  It  is  midnight,"  and  goes  on 
to  say  "  the  night  is  dark  and  silent,  and  in  the 
midst  of  the  tragic,  solemn  silence  I  hear  the  '  Who 
goes  there  ?  '  of  the  sentinels,  and  the  rifle-shots 
which  cut  down  inexorably  those  vipers  who  bear 
the  name  of  Arabs." 

Going  back  to  describe  the  surprise  of  the  23rd, 
he  says,  "  On  a  sudden,  thousands  and  thousands  of 
those  vermin  in  human  form  issued  from  all  directions 
and  surprised  the  battalion." 

It  was  to  the  mercy  of  men  like  this  that  the 
innocent  oasis  Arabs  were  left. 


CHAPTER    VII 

THE   ROAD   TO   THE   FRONT 

At  the  battle  of  Sharashett,  on  October  23rd,  the 
Turks,  having  demonstrated  along  the  Italian  right 
and  centre,  made  a  very  furious  charge  on  the  left 
and  broke  through  the  Italian  line  into  the  oasis. 

Three  days  later,  on  October  26th,  they  repeated 
precisely  the  same  tactics  and  with  the  same  result. 
One  would  have  thought  that  by  this  time  General 
Caneva  would  have  been  ready  for  them.  But  at 
Sidi  Messri,  as  at  Sharashett,  the  oasis  was  "  flooded 
with  wild  Arabs."  This  is  General  Caneva's  ex- 
pression, but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  exact  number 
was  250. 

General  Caneva  did,  he  says,  devote  the  24th  and 
25th  "  to  the  preparation  of  the  line  of  defence,  to 
an  assiduous  watch  inside  and  outside  the  city  where 
a  grave  ferment  was  noticed,  a  consequence  of  the 
repression  in  the  oasis  on  the  23rd." 

The  Commander-in-chief  further  remarks  in  his 
official  report  that  on  the  afternoon  of  the  24th  he 
gave  orders  for  the  complete  disarmament  of  the 
inhabitants  of  the  oasis.  This,  he  explains,  was 
absolutely  necessary  in  order  to  protect  the  troops 
from  "  treacherous  attacks  "  in  the  rear. 

This  is  very  true  ;  but  why  did  not  General  Caneva 
disarm  those  people  earlier  ?  A  week  before,  their 
houses  might  have  been  searched,  and  their  knives, 

201 


202         ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

razors,  and  antiquated  flintlocks  removed  without 
any  harm  being  done.  Now,  the  ItaHan  soldiers 
were  quite  carried  away  by  fear  and  by  suspicion, 
and  they  killed  every  Arab  whom  they  found  with 
arms  of  any  kind  in  his  possession.  The  "  disarma- 
ment "  was  carried  out  at  first  by  four  companies 
of  bluejackets  plus  two  companies  of  the  6th  Infantry 
Regiment. 

"  It  was  precisely  at  this  time,"  says  General 
Caneva,  "  that  having  seen  how  ineffectual  the 
ordinary  means  of  repression  {gli  ordinari  mezzi  di 
repressione)  were  against  the  animosity  and  the 
ferocity  of  the  rebels,  we  were  obliged  to  have 
recourse  to  severe  and  energetic  measures,  carried 
out,  however,  with  all  possible  precautions,  as  is 
done  in  analogous  cases  by  all  belligerents." 

These  "  severe  and  energetic  "  measures  were  the 
wholesale  slaughter  of  the  male  oasis  Arabs  from 
the  age  of  twelve  or  fourteen  upwards.  Whether 
General  Caneva  ordered  this  massacre  or  not  I  do 
not  know,  but  if  he  did  not,  the  massacre  was  in- 
evitable as  soon  as  he  let  loose  among  the  peaceful 
Arabs  a  large  number  of  panic-stricken  and  vindictive 
soldiers,  operating,  as  a  rule,  in  small  groups  not 
commanded  by  officers.  "  The  Times "  corres- 
pondent has  said  all  that  can  possibly  be  said  in 
favour  of  the  Italians,  but  he  has  to  admit  (November 
8th)  that : 

"  There  is  one  lesson  that  stands  out  in  bold 
relief  from  this  miserable  business,  and  that  is  the 
necessity  of  employing  in  duties  of  repression  an 
adequate  number  of  officers  and  of  having  a  suf- 
ficient number  of  officers  thus  to  employ.  As  far 
as  I  could  judge,  the  licence  which  carried  the 


THE  ROAD  TO  THE  FRONT  203 

Italian  soldiery  away  was  the  fact  that  the  house- 
to-house  search  for  arms  found  small  detachments 
operating  without  commissioned  officers.  This 
was  where  the  danger  crept  in.  Sicilians  and  hot- 
blooded  Southerners  who  had  just  seen  their  dead 
— butchered,  as  they  thought,  in  circumstances 
of  black  treachery — were  dangerous  material  to 
let  loose  in  a  suburb  when  the  orders  were  that 
the  suspicion  of  carrying  an  arm  was  justification 
for  a  summary  death-sentence.  All  armies,  even 
our  own,  require  a  full  complement  of  officers  to 
cope  with  all  the  exigencies  of  war." 

But  I  shall  deal  later  with  this  question  of  the 
"  repressione."  First  I  must  describe  the  battle  of 
Sidi  Messri.  I  should  like  to  say,  however,  that  the 
severity  of  the  Italians  towards  the  natives  of  the 
oasis  was  largely  the  result  of  fear.  There  was  a 
general  impression  in  the  army  that  the  23rd  had 
been  only  an  Arab  reconnaissance,  pushed  too  far, 
and  that  there  was  impending  a  great  attack  in 
comparison  with  which  Sharashett  would  be  only 
child's  play. 

Those  suspicions  Avere  confirmed  by  the  reports 
of  the  aviators  who,  on  the  25th,  reported  several 
large  Turkish  columns  three  miles  towards  the  south- 
east. 

More  ominous  still,  a  Turkish  officer  rode  in  from 
the  Desert  with  a  white  flag  and  demanded  the  sur- 
render of  the  city  in  two  hours.  Some  of  the  Italians 
professed  to  regard  this  as  comic,  some  as  "  insolenza 
eccessiva."  I  could  not  help  thinking,  myself,  that 
it  was  one  of  those  soldierly  touches  of  which  in 
this  war  there  are  very  few  to  the  credit  of  the 
invaders.     The  superb  self-confidence  of  this  young 


204        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

Turkish  officer,  his  mihtary  bearing,  his  curt  salute, 
his  curt  message,  made  the  Itahans  look  like  men  who 
are  only  playing  at  soldiers.  The  Turks  might  have 
respected  General  Caneva  more  if  he  had  even  once 
sent  an  officer  to  their  camp  with  some  such  bold,  im- 
perative message.  Caneva  never  sent  an  officer,  but 
hardly  a  day  passed  that  he  did  not  send  unfortunate 
negro  boys  and  other  natives  into  the  Desert  with 
sly,  treacherous,  underhand  letters,  the  object  of 
which  was  to  detach  some  of  the  Arab  chiefs  from 
the  Turkish  side.  If  those  poor  devils  had  refused  to 
go,  the  Italians  would  probably  have  killed  them — it 
was  a  painful  sight  to  see  some  of  them  going  out  into 
the  waste,  in  mortal  fear  of  being  shot  in  the  back  by  the 
Italians.  If  they  did  go  and  did  not  destroy  the  letters 
on  the  way,  the  Arabs  would  hang  them.  A  good 
many  Italians  must  have  regarded  this  strange 
demand  of  the  Turkish  officer  as  rather  alarming,  and 
the  preparations  for  the  defence  were  pushed  on  with 
feverish  activity.  The  General  Staff  inspected  the 
positions  and  strengthened  weak  points.  The  men 
worked  all  night  in  some  places,  putting  up  earth- 
works. 

General  Caneva's  defensive  preparations  were  as 
follows  :  The  troops  in  the  oasis  were  reinforced  by 
bluejackets  and  detachments  of  fortress  artillery 
armed  with  rifles,  for  the  fortress  artillery  had  not 
yet  been  placed  in  position.  Several  batteries  of 
rapid-fire  cannon  and  a  number  of  machine-guns, 
which  had  not  been  landed  or  not  placed  in  position 
on  the  23rd,  were  now  sent  to  the  weak  points  of  the 
oasis  line,  where  they  were  of  infinite  service  next 
day.  The  Carlo  Alberto  and  the  Sicilia  were  anchored 
at  a  spot  off  the  shore  east  of  Tripoli,  from  which 
they  could  bombard  the  advancing  Turks. 


THE  ROAD  TO  THE  FRONT  205 

But  the  Turks  also  had  been  busy.  Invisible, 
inaudible,  they  had  nevertheless  crept  up  on  all  sides 
towards  the  Italian  line.  In  some  parts  of  the  oasis 
they  were  only  a  few  hundred  yards  off.  During 
the  night  of  the  28th,  the  Italian  sentinels  among 
the  palm-trees  felt  like  hunters  driven  to  bay  by  an 
army  of  noiseless,  velvet-footed  tigers — tigers  with 
the  brains  of  demons  and  more  than  the  usual  blood- 
thirstiness  of  their  own  terrible  species. 

Already,  on  the  25th,  Fethi  Bey  had  passed  his 
hand  lightly  along  the  whole  Italian  front  as  a  con- 
noisseur might  pass  his  hand  over  a  work  of  art. 
He  had,  in  other  words,  made  a  brief,  feigned  attack 
which  had  disclosed  the  strength  of  the  Italian 
defences  from  Gargaresh  to  Sharashett. 

Shortly  after  five  in  the  morning  the  real  attack 
began.  In  the  Minerva  Hotel  I  heard  the  earth  quiver 
and  the  windows  rattle  to  the  roar  of  the  naval  guns, 
and  immediately  ascended,  half  dressed  and  half 
asleep,  to  the  flat  roof.  Dawn  was  still  struggling 
with  darkness.  The  stars  still  shone.  A  gentle 
breeze  blew  from  the  sea. 

But  all  the  Italian  line  was  in  action.  We  were 
girt  by  a  circle  of  fire.  Graceful  little  clouds  of 
shrapnel  burst  over  Sharashett ;  and  above  these 
clouds  the  aeroplanes  fearlessly  manoeuvred.  I  soon 
saw  that  the  fighting  at  Sharashett  and  Henni 
was  much  more  serious  than  the  fighting  elsewhere, 
so  without  further  ado  I  finished  dressing  myself, 
took  my  camera,  revolver,  and  binoculars,  and 
sallied  forth  in  the  direction  of  the  east  flank.  The 
shops  were,  of  course,  shut,  and  the  streets  deserted 
save  for  occasional  parties  of  sailors  and  soldiers  who 
marched  down  them.  At  the  entrance  to  the  oasis, 
beyond  the  Esparto  Grass  Factory  of  the  Banco  di 


206         ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

Roma,  a  young  officer  stopped  me  and  said  that  I 
would  not  be  allowed  to  go  further.  But  I  showed 
him  my  pass  and  he  was  content,  though  anxious 
about  my  personal  safety  in  going  through  the  oasis. 
He  asked  me  to  await  the  passage  of  a  pattuglia 
(patrol),  and  said  that  it  would  be  madness  for  me  to 
go  on  alone. 

And  certainly  the  rest  of  my  journey  was  depressing 
enough.  I  walked  along  a  street  of  houses  which  had 
just  been  looted  and  destroyed.  I  was  alone,  and 
the  echo  of  my  own  footsteps  resounded  as  if  I  were 
walking  in  a  tomb.  This  suburb,  so  filled  with  noisy 
life  four  days  earlier,  was  now  as  uninhabited  as 
Pompeii.  I  did  not  see  a  single  Arab  all  the  way, 
nor  did  I  meet  with  a  single  Italian. 

The  oppressive  solitudes  of  the  oasis  were  heavy 
with  a  sense  of  tragedy.  The  stillness  was  hostile, 
the  very  air  was  dense  with  unutterable  menace. 
The  shattered  doorways  and  windows  gaped  like 
the  mouths  of  dead  men.  Black  with  blood  and 
pitted  with  bullets,  the  naked  walls  exhaled  the 
quintessence  of  malignity  and  hate. 

The  oasis  dogs  are  usually  very  noisy.  On  this 
day  they  were  still  as  death.  I  saw  some  of  them 
slinking  past  in  the  distance,  their  tails  hanging  low, 
and    a    furtive,    guilty    expression    in    their    eyes. 

Had   they   been   feeding   on ?      But   I   put   the 

loathsome  thought  away  and  considered  my  own 
danger.  For  I  must  confess  that  I  regretted  not 
having  waited  for  the  patrol,  before  I  entered  on  this 
blood-stained  zone  of  death.  Amid  the  cacti  and  the 
ruined  houses  there  might  very  well  lurk  an  unfortunate 
Arab  who  had  survived  the  man-hunt  of  the  last 
three  days,  and  in  his  desperation  he  might  easily 
mistake  me  for  an  Italian. 


THE  ROAD  TO  THE  FRONT  207 

Finally,  when  I  knew  by  the  noise  of  the  firing 
that  I  was  not  far  from  the  Italian  line,  I  came  on  a 
group  of  soldiers  standing  in  reserve  with  about  a 
dozen  horses  behind  an  Arab  house  and  wall.  There 
were  sentinels  on  the  look-out  towards  Tripoli  as  well 
as  towards  the  Arabs,  and,  on  seeing  me  approach, 
some  of  them  aimed  at  me  with  every  sign  of  excite- 
ment. My  strange  dress  had  evidently  alarmed 
them,  but  a  young  officer  restrained  them  and  made 
me  welcome.  I  did  not  know  what  a  narrow  escape 
I  had  on  this  occasion  until  I  learned  later  that  all 
the  soldiers  were  under  the  impression  that  their  orders 
were  to  "  shoot  every  civilian  approaching  the  rear 
of  the  trenches."  A  French  journalist  once  asked 
a  sentinel  why  he  kept  blazing  away  all  night.  The 
ingenuous  soldier  replied  :  "  Prima  si  spar  a,  poi  si  da 
il  '  Chi  va  Id  ? '  ordine  del  Ministero  delta  Guerra.^^ 
("  First  shoot,  then  ask  '  Who  goes  there  ?  '  Such  is 
the  order  of  the  Ministry  of  War.")  He  had  evidently 
got  the  order  wrong  end  foremost,  and  I  suppose 
this  explains  how  so  many  innocent  to\Mispeople, 
including  seven  or  eight  Maltese,  lost  their  lives  in 
Tripoli  town  itself  during  these  days  of  panic. 

We  were  about  five  or  six  hundred  yards  from  the 
front,  but  the  Arab  bullets  continually  whistled 
over  our  heads,  so  that  we  found  it  necessary  to  hide 
behind  the  wall.  Soon  after  I  saw  a  long  line  of 
bluejackets  in  charge  of  a  naval  officer  coming  down 
a  side  lane,  and  I  joined  them  as  they  crept  along 
the  road,  which  was  certainly  not  in  a  very  safe 
condition,  for  every  few  moments  an  ominous  whiz 
passed  down  the  centre  of  it  and,  judging  from  the 
sound,  not  very  high  above  our  heads. 

These  had  come  to  reinforce  a  party  of  soldiers  who 
were  crouching  behind  a  mud-wall  about  a  hundred 


208        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

yards  from  the  front,  and  firing  continuously  at  the 
enemy.  The  firing  was  heavy,  the  whiz  of  the 
bullets  frequent,  and  it  was  most  advisable,  if  not 
absolutely  necessary,  to  refrain  from  looking  over 
that  wall.  I  did  look  over  it  once,  and  this  is  what 
I  saw. 

The  extreme  front  was  close  to  me  It  consisted 
of  a  line  of  bluejackets  lying  flat  on  the  ground 
behind  a  row  of  sandbags  and  firing  very  calmly 
and  very  steadily.  An  officer  pointed  out  an  Arab, 
but  the  Arab  had  vanished  before  I  could  see  him.  I 
could  only  see  the  palm-groves,  cacti,  olive-trees  and 
mud-walls. 

About  half-way  between  me  and  the  front  stood 
the  large  uprights  of  a  well.  Behind  those  uprights 
and  an  adjacent  wall  were  posted  some  half-dozen 
Italian  soldiers.  On  catching  sight  of  my  khaki- 
coloured  Tunisian  sun-hat  one  of  those  soldiers  mani- 
fested great  alarm,  but  was  reassured  on  seeing  some 
of  his  comrades  with  me.  That  rear  attack  on  the 
23rd  had  evidently  given  a  bad  shaking  to  the  nerves 
of  the  entire  army.  Somewhere  at  the  front  a 
machine-gun  worked  almost  continuously,  and  was 
evidently  of  great  assistance,  for  the  Arab  fire  became 
very  hot  whenever  it  ceased  for  a  moment  or  two. 
Unfortunately  the  Arabs  used  black  powder,  so  that 
the  smoke  from  their  rifles  always  betrayed  their 
whereabouts  and  showed  the  men  in  charge  of  the 
machine-gun  where  to  direct  their  stream  of  lead 
At  the  end  of  the  wall  behind  which  I  lay  was  another 
well  with  the  usual  large  uprights.  One  soldier  lay 
here,  on  watch,  looking  south.  Suddenly  he  began 
firing  as  if  for  bare  life,  and  soon  he  was  joined  by 
several  other  soldiers,  who  also  fired.  They  were 
firing   on   Arabs   who   were   trying   to    flank   them. 


THE  ROAD  TO  THE  FRONT  209 

Those  Arabs  sent  two  or  three  bullets  our  way.  Had 
they  aimed  a  little  lower,  they  would  have  enfiladed 
us  and  killed  or  wounded  perhaps  half-a-dozen  soldiers 
with  every  shot,  for  we  were  crouching  all  in  a  row. 
Close  by  was  an  Arab  hut  which  had  been  converted 
into  a  dressing-station.  It  was  nearer  the  front 
than  any  dressing-station  that  I  have  ever  seen  in 
war,  and  was  well  provided  with  white  and  Red 
Cross  flags.  I  went  inside  as  a  bullet  whizzed  past 
the  doorway,  very  close,  and  found  there  some 
military  doctors  with  their  assistants.  All  seemed 
very  lugubrious,  but  they  gave  me  a  cup  of  coffee, 
which  I  greatly  appreciated.  I  found  that  I  was 
watched  carefully,  however,  and  by  and  by  an 
officer  of  the  Carabinieri,  an  affable,  tub-shaped  man 
who  speaks  Arabic,  I  believe,  and  is  connected  with 
the  Secret  Service  department,  approached  me, 
scrutinised  me  closely,  and  then  asked  curtly  for  my 
papers. 

I  would  have  felt  more  horrified  than  I  did  at  the 
touch  of  his  hand  if  I  had  known  beforehand  where 
I  was  to  meet  him  next.  It  was  on  the  Bumeliana 
road  ;  his  face  was  then  dark -purple  with  excite- 
ment, his  eyes  were  bloodshot,  and  he  bellowed  like 
a  bull  as  he  blazed  away  with  his  revolver  at  a  crowd 
of  manacled  natives  weltering  on  the  ground  in  a 
pool  of  blood. 

Having  satisfied  this  dread  functionary,  I  crawled 
back  along  the  wall,  got  out  into  the  road,  and  made 
a  series  of  short  dashes  for  the  front.  I  ran  first  to 
the  shelter  of  the  well  uprights,  and  then  to  the 
rear  of  a  cart  which  had  been  abandoned  in  the 
roadway  and  which  gave  a  greater  touch  of  desolation 
to  the  scene  than  anything  else  in  sight.  From  the 
shelter  of  this  cart  I  photographed  the  line  in  front. 


210        ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

When  I  returned  to  the  wall  I  was  surprised  by  the 
silence  and  depression  of  those  Italians,  usually  so 
volatile.  That  group  was  certainly  not  a  "  magnifico 
quadro  di  guerra." 

Now  that  they  had  to  face  free  men  from  the 
Desert,  free  men  with  rifles  in  their  hands,  the  Italian 
soldiers  did  not  look  at  all  so  gay  as  when  they 
only  had  to  shoot  inoffensive  people  whose  wrists  were 
securely  tied  behind  their  backs. 

But  one  cannot,  after  all,  blame  the  private  soldier 
and  sailor  for  feeling  miserable  and  looking  glum  under 
such  circumstances.  This  was  hardly  the  sort  of 
"  passeggiata  militare "  (military  promenade)  that 
they  had  been  promised. 


CHAPTER    VIII 

THE   BATTLE   OF  SIDI   MESSRI :   ARABS   AGAIN 
BREAK    ITALIAN   LINE 

When,  on  October  23rd,  the  Arabs  broke  the  ItaHan 
line  at  Sharashett,  the  ItaHans  said  that  they  had 
been  taken  by  surprise.  The  enemy  had  approached 
too  near  before  being  recognised.  Besides,  "  he 
knew  every  palm-tree,"  as  an  Italian  put  it ;  the  he 
of  the  land  was  quite  familiar  to  him.  And  he  had 
taken  a  number  of  other  unfair  advantages.  In 
short,  he  had  not  "  played  the  game." 

Just  as  if  to  show  the  invaders  that  they  could 
break  the  line  anywhere  they  chose,  the  Arabs  at- 
tacked a  point  in  the  Desert  on  October  26th,  and 
broke  through  there  also.  This  point  was  a  villa 
between  the  Cavalry  Barracks  and  Bumeliana,  called 
"  the  house  of  Genial  Bey."  Gemal  Bey  is  the 
Turkish  Chief  of  Staff,  and  he  may  have  directed 
the  attack  himself. 

On  account  of  this  compound  fracture  of  his  left 
wing.  General  Caneva  abandoned  the  whole  Sidi 
Messri-Sharashett  line  on  the  28th,  and  fell  back 
nearly  two  miles.  But,  in  spite  of  this,  he  claimed  to 
have  won  a  brilliant  victory  on  the  26th. 

The  Italian  commander  offers  many  explanations 
for  this  second  breakage.  The  broken  ground  in 
front  of  Gemal  Bey's  house  made  it,  says  General 
Caneva,   a  great  temptation   to    the  enemy  and  a 

211 


212         ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

great  peril  to  the  Italians.  He  assures  us,  again  and 
again,  that  the  Turks  were  "  ottimi  conoscitori  del 
terreno "  (knew  the  land  like  the  palms  of  their 
hands).  It  can  easily  be  believed  that  the  Turkish 
officer  who  led  the  charge  was  familiar  with  what 
was  probably  his  own  back -garden,  but  surely  the 
Italians  had  had  plenty  of  time  to  study  it  too,  for  it 
was,  after  all,  a  small  garden.  It  did  not  contain 
three  acres. 

The  bald  fact  remains  that  by  means  of  a  terrible 
frontal  assault,  the  Arabs  drove  the  7th  company  of 
the  84.th  Infantry  out  of  the  house,  killing  Captain 
Hombert,  the  commandant. 

The  men  from  the  Desert  had,  as  usual,  begun 
their  attack  at  the  most  unearthly  hour  of  the  twenty- 
four,  at  the  moment  when  day  is  in  process  of  painful 
birth,  and  when  the  sleepy  and  tired  sentinel  cannot 
tell  whether  that  dim,  sickly  white  light  comes  from 
the  approaching  sun  or  is  only  a  faint  radiance  ex- 
haled by  the  Desert.  A  ghostly,  unfelt  wind  had 
sprung  up,  and  was  shaking  the  tops  of  the  palm- 
trees,  which  rustled  mysteriously,  in  the  early  dawn, 
like  the  dark,  nodding  plumes  of  funeral  cars.  Cocks 
crowed ;  a  dog  howled  dismally  in  the  distance. 
There  were  mysterious  and  inexplicable  tappings 
and  movings  in  the  underwood,  and  the  sentinel's 
morbid  imagination  was  crowded  by  phantom  shapes 
from  the  blood-curdling  folk-lore  of  Sicily. 

At  the  same  instant  as  the  assault  began  on  the 
house  of  Gemal  Bey,  an  assault  commenced  all  along 
the  Italian  line  from  Sidi  Messri  to  Bumeliana.  It 
was  still  dark,  and  the  sand-hills  were  suddenly 
outlined  against  the  black  sky  in  a  thousand  little 
bursts  of  flame — caused  by  the  discharge  of  Turkish 
and  Arab  rifles  from  the  edge  of  the  dunes.     The 


THE  BATTLE  OF  SIDI  MESSRI         213 

Desert  looked  like  a  public  building  outlined  on  some 
festive  occasion  in  bulbs  of  electric  light.  But,  alas  ! 
it  was  no  festival.  October  26th  was  to  be  one  of 
the  ugliest  days  in  Italian  military  history,  a  blacker 
day  in  some  respects  than  Adowa  itself. 

JBoom  !  Boom  !  Boom  !  All  the  Italian  batteries 
responded.  All  the  rifles  in  the  trenches  went  off ; 
and  the  trenches,  too,  looked  in  the  darkness  like  a 
long  line  of  flame. 

Meanwhile,  the  remnants  of  the  7th  company, 
which  had  been  expelled  from  the  house  of  Gemal 
Bey,  turned  up  near  Tripoli  city  and,  in  order  to 
explain  their  presence,  told  the  usual  harrowing  tale 
of  having  been  attacked  in  the  rear  by  "  friendly  " 
Arabs.  Yes,  when  their  ammunition  was  exhausted, 
they  had  been  most  treacherously  set  upon  by  a 
pochi  Arabi  rimasti  nei  giardini  vicini  e  non  disturbati 
dai  nostri  'per  V  amicizia  e  la  cordialitd  che  avcvano 
dimostrata  (a  few  Arabs  who  had  remained  in  the 
neighbouring  gardens,  and  who  had  not  been  disturbed 
by  our  men  owing  to  the  friendship  and  cordiality 
which  they  had  demonstrated). 

This  was  the  sort  of  story  that  contributed  to  the 
massacres  of  October  26th.  The  peaceful  oasis  Arabs 
were  again  the  scape-goats. 

But  during  the  previous  three  days  the  soldiers 
had  killed  or  chased  away  every  Arab  in  the  oasis 
immediately  behind  them,  while  the  rest  of  the 
"  friendlies  "  were  too  well  watched  to  be  able  to 
move. 

Even  General  Caneva  refused  to  endorse  this 
second  tale  of  an  attack  by  "  friendlies."  His  re- 
port leaves  us  under  the  impression  that  the 
rear  attack  was  made  by  Desert  Arabs  who, 
"  favoured  by  the  obscurity,"  had  managed  to  creep 


214        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

unperceived  through  the  Hne  in  the  oasis  before 
that  hne  had  been  broken  by  the  frontal  attack.  A 
similar  view  is  held  by  some  of  his  officers,  while  the 
"  treacherous  attack  "  theory  is  adopted  by  none  of 
them. 

We  have,  for  example,  the  testimony  of  Captain 
Tamaio  to  the  same  effect,  given  by  that  out-and-out 
jingo  Senator,  Signor  Enrico  Corradini,  in  his  "  Con- 
quista  di  Tripoli." 

"  II  capitano  Tamaio  raccontava  e  diceva  che  forse 
gli  arabi  i  quali  avevano  assalito  alle  spalle,  erano 
degli  stessi  venuti  coi  turchi  dal  deserto  e  penetrati  in 
qualche  punto  attraverso  le  trincee."  ("  Captain 
Tamaio  said  that  perhaps  the  Arabs  who  had  at- 
tacked in  the  rear  were  some  of  those  who  had  come 
with  the  Turks  from  the  Desert  and  had  managed  to 
cross  the  trenches  at  some  point.") 

And,  just  as  happened  on  the  23rd,  the  Arabs  who 
now  invaded  the  oasis  found  there  many  of  their  own 
men  who  had  crept  in  the  night  before.  Signor 
Corradini  is  positive  on  this  point.  "  The  Arabs," 
he  says,  "  poured  through  this  breach  like  a  torrent 
and  united  with  them  others  of  their  people  who, 
during  the  night,  had  succeeded  at  this  point  in 
creeping  into  the  oasis  by  deep,  covered  paths 
leading  from  the  Desert.  The  men  who  had  thus 
got  in  posted  themselves  behind  walls,  or  lay  down 
behind  folds  of  earth,  and  tried  to  cut  off  the  6th  and 
7th  companies." 

But  the  able  correspondents  of  the  "  Corriere 
della  Sera  "  say  nothing  of  Arabs  having  crept  un- 
perceived through  the  lines.  They  seem  to  attribute 
all  the  rear  attacks  that  morning  to  the  men  who 
had  broken  the  line  at  the  house  of  Gemal  Bey. 

As  I  have  already  stated,  the  outside  attack  began 


THE  BATTLE  OF  SIDI  MESSRI         215 

before  dawn,  and  the  Arabs  had,  as  usual,  crept  up 
to  within  two  hundred  yards  of  the  Italians  before 
the  latter  had  perceived  them.  Gli  arabi  erano  gid 
sulla  trincea  quando  i  soldati  iniziavana  il  juoco. 
(The  Arabs  were  already  on  the  trenches  when  the 
soldiers  began  to  fire.) 

The  same  correspondents  admit  that  "  the  com- 
pany, unable  to  resist  the  onslaught,  fell  back  ;  and 
some  hundreds  of  Arabs  penetrated  inside  the  circle 
of  the  advanced  posts.  The  cries  of  the  enemy,  who 
came  in  masses,  preceded  by  cavalry,  were  infernal." 
The  shouts  of  "Allah  Akbar !  "  drowned  the  screams 
of  the  wounded  and  the  moans  of  the  dying. 

In  front  of  them,  we  are  told,  bounded  an 
athletic  man  whom  the  Italians  recognised  as  a 
pleasant,  gnarled  old  Jewish  pedlar  who  had  been 
selling  tobacco  at  the  front  on  the  previous  day,  and 
who  had  seemed,  so  far  as  his  limited  knowledge  of 
the  Italian  language  permitted,  to  be  overflowing 
with  kindly  benedictions  on  the  Italian  soldiers. 
"  The  fanatics  having  succeeded  in  breaking  the 
line,  rushed  towards  the  cavalry  barracks,  spreading 
themselves  out  in  the  oasis  and  attacking  the  neigh- 
bouring trenches  in  the  rear." 

Once  more,  says  General  Caneva,  "  a  horde  of 
many  hundreds  of  Arabs  poured  like  a  sea  into  the 
oasis  through  the  open  gap  in  our  line  of  defence." 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  "  horde  "  only  amounted  to 
250  men. 

The  firing  by  the  Arabs,  who  had  thus  broken  the 
line,  on  the  rear  of  the  4th  and  6th  companies  caused, 
in  the  trenches  which  those  companies  occupied, 
what  the  Italians  describe  as  "  una  confusione 
sanguinosa  "  (bloody  confusion). 

Unfortunately,  the  natives  again  made  the  mis- 


216        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

take  which  had  turned  their  victory  of  the  23rd  into 
a  defeat.  Their  craze  for  loot  undid  them.  Hardly 
had  they  driven  the  Italians  out  of  their  trenches 
when  they  began  stripping  the  dead  bodies,  and 
eating  with  avidity  the  biscuits  and  pieces  of  meat 
which  they  found  in  the  pockets.  They  also  appro- 
priated the  knapsacks  and  all  sorts  of  odds  and  ends 
which  they  discovered  about  the  trenches. 

One  Arab  who  was  killed  elsewhere  that  day  was 
found  to  have  on  his  feet  a  pair  of  ill-fitting  boots 
which  were  afterwards  identified  as  having  been 
taken  from  the  dead  body  of  a  corporal  who  had 
been  killed  that  morning  in  the  trenches.  Somebody 
else  must  have  got  the  rest  of  the  corporal's  belong- 
ings ;  and  when  he  was  shot,  the  Arab  of  the  boots 
was  probably  roaming  the  oasis  on  the  look-out  for 
some  soldier  with  a  pair  of  socks  that  would  match 
his  newly  acquired  foot-gear.  But  the  boots  prob- 
ably proved  his  undoing.  He  might  have  escaped 
had  he  not  been  wearing  them  when  the  Italians 
gave  chase. 

In  the  same  way  many  Arabs  were  shot  down  in 
Gemal  Bey's  villa  while  industriously  stripping 
corpses  instead  of  trying  to  meet  the  counter-attack 
of  the  Italians. 

But  a  great  deal  of  booty  must  have  been  carried 
off  into  the  Desert,  for  during  later  attacks  some  of 
the  Arabs  appeared  on  the  horizon  dressed  as  Ber- 
saglieri,  and  in  some  of  the  soldiers'  letters  we  find 
bitter  complaints  about  all  the  spare  linen  and  cloth- 
ing having  been  carried  off  by  the  Arabs,  with  the 
result  that  the  soldiers  did  not  in  some  cases  get  a 
change  of  linen  for  months. 

This  stripping  of  the  slain  was  an  unpleasant 
habit  of  the  Arabs,  and  the  Italian  soldiers  seemed 


THE  BATTLE  OF  SIDI  MESSRI         217 

to  think  that  it  was  carried  out  with  a  view  to  insult- 
ing and  shaming  the  dead.  But  I  do  not  think  that 
the  practice  constituted  an  atrocity.  Up  to  a  hundred 
years  ago  the  stripping  of  corpses  was  the  rule  in 
European  war  ;  and,  in  the  present  instance,  the 
only  desire  of  the  Arabs  was,  in  most  cases,  loot. 
According  to  the  "  Corriere  della  Sera,"  they  even 
stripped  their  own  dead.  They  are  now  getting  so 
much  Italian  loot,  however,  that  I  should  not  be 
surprised  if,  before  the  war  ends,  the  Arabs  are  all 
dressed  in  Italian  uniforms  and  provided  with 
Italian  Zeiss  glasses,  water-bottles,  capes,  rifles,  etc. 
At  least,  that  is  the  only  conclusion  I  can  come  to 
after  having  read  the  accounts  of  unexceptionable 
witnesses  who,  like  Mr.  E,  N.  Bennett,  have  been 
with  the  Turkish  forces  in  the  interior. 

Not  only  did  the  rear-attack  of  the  Desert  Arabs 
cause  "  bloody  confusion  "  in  the  Italian  trenches. 
A  murder  committed  by  one  "  friendly  "  also  caused 
consternation. 

The  murderer  was  an  old  gardener  who  had  been 
employed  in  Gemal  Bey's  villa,  but  who  had  latterly 
taken  to  cooking  food  for  the  officers  ;  and  the  victim 
was  Lieutenant  Orsi  of  the  84th  Regiment.  The  old 
man's  daughter  had  been  suffering  from  fever,  and 
for  days  previously  the  young  lieutenant  had  taken 
a  kindly  interest  in  her  and  given  her  quinine.  Only 
that  morning  he  had  brought  her  medicine  and  also 
a  cup  of  hot  coffee  from  the  regimental  mess. 

But  the  girl's  father  ran  amok  and  seemed  to  lose 
his  senses,  when,  a  few  moments  later,  he  heard  the 
deafening  fusillade  of  the  conquering  Arabs  and  the 
terrible  battle-cries  of  "  Allah  Akbar  !  "  and  "  La 
ilaha  illa-llahu  Mohammed  rasulu  'llah  !  " 

Seizing  a  knife,  he  rushed  at  the  man  who  had 


218        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

saved  his  daughter's  life  and  stabbed  him  to  the 
heart.  But  he  was  bayoneted  so  quickly  that  he  fell 
dead  across  the  still  warm  body  of  his  victim. 

This  story,  I  may  remark,  has  been  told  in  varying 
keys  of  indignation  and  horror  by  every  Italian 
correspondent  in  Tripoli.  It  has  been  cited  as  an 
instance  of  the  blackest  ingratitude. 

But  we  have  not  got  the  old  gardener's  version  of 
it.  Is  it  not  possible  that  the  gay  young  lieutenant 
was  unaware  of  the  fierce  jealousy  of  the  Moslems  in 
everything  which  regards  their  women  ?  Did  he  not 
know  that  a  Mohammedan  father  would  sooner  see 
his  daughter  dead  than  snatched  from  the  grave  by 
a  giaour  who  had  looked  upon  her  unveiled  face  ? 

In  all  these  matters  we  only  get,  of  course,  one 
side  of  the  case.  The  other  side  we  never  get,  for  the 
Mussulmans  are  too  proud  to  write  to  our  papers 
about  the  ill-treatment  of  their  women,  and  in  any 
case  they  cannot  write,  as  they  are  dead. 

Indeed,  in  the  present  instance  all  the  members  of 
the  old  gardener's  family  are  dead.  An  Italian 
correspondent  tells  us  that  "  all  his  [the  gardener's] 
family  was  destroyed  during  the  combat  "  ("  tutta  la 
sua  famiglia  e  stata  distrutta  durante  il  comhaUimento  "). 
This  is  rather  a  mysterious  sentence.  It  lends  itself 
to  various  interpretations,  and  to  one  very  black 
interpretation  when  we  remember  the  day  this 
occurred — the  terrible  October  26th — and  the  scenes 
of  massacre  which  the  oasis  was  to  witness  before 
nightfall. 

In  any  case,  it  is  singular  that  the  gardener  should 
seek  out  Lieutenant  Orsi  while  the  latter  was  actually 
in  the  trenches  "  in  the  middle  of  his  soldiers," 
unless  the  old  man  fancied  that  some  wrong  had 
been  done  to   his   daughter.     Otherwise   he   would 


THE  BATTLE  OF  SIDI  MESSRI         219 

naturally  have  attacked  some  one  else.  I  only 
suggest,  of  course,  that  the  young  lieutenant  may, 
in  his  ignorance  of  Moslem  prejudices,  have  quite 
innocently  lifted  the  girl's  veil ;  but  it  is  a  pity  that 
no  investigation  could  be  held. 

I  have  heard  of  one  case  in  which  an  attempt  was 
made  to  assassinate  a  European  in  Tripoli.  The 
would-be  assassin  was  said,  of  course,  to  be  an 
emissary  of  the  Young  Turk  Committee,  which  was 
absolutely  absurd.  The  victim  received  telegrams 
of  congratulation  on  his  escape,  from  all  the  munici- 
palities, newspapers,  mayors,  and  poets  in  Italy.  I 
am  told,  however,  that  the  assault  was  emphatically 
not  because  he  was  pro-Italian. 

But,  as  before,  the  Arabs  were  too  few  in  number 
and  too  badly  armed  to  hold  their  own  long,  much 
less  to  break  into  the  town.  Besides,  they  continued 
to  be  over-fond  of  biscuits.  For,  having  rushed  the 
encampment  of  the  84th  Regiment,  they  discovered 
there  another  consignment  of  biscuits  and  at  once 
started  to  devour  them. 

I  do  not  like  to  give  General  Caneva  any  hints 
that  may  help  him  in  the  prosecution  of  this  iniquitous 
war,  but  if  he  were  really  crafty  he  would  import 
some  very  tasty  varieties  of  hard-baked  bread,  and 
leave  boxes  of  them  some  distance  inside  the  trenches, 
where  they  would  form  a  sort  of  second  line  of  de- 
fence ! 

Charles  Martel  noticed  this  weakness  of  the  Arabs 
for  loot  when  he  warned  the  Franks  against  attack- 
ing those  invincible  invaders  until  "  they  have 
loaded  themselves  with  the  incumbrance  of  wealth." 

Colonel  Spinelli,  who  was  in  command  at  the 
Cavalry  Barracks,  slaughtered  a  good  many  of  the 
biscuit-eaters  and  at  the  same  time  used  his  utmost 


220        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

endeavours  to  drive  the  invaders  out  of  the  dense 
undergrowth  at  Gemal  Bey's  house.  He  sent  two 
squads  of  the  12th  company,  the  machine-gun 
section,  and  all  the  Lodi  cavalrymen,  the  latter,  of 
course,  on  foot.  All  were  under  the  command  of 
Captains  Gandolfi  and  Landolina.  This  relieving 
force  fought  its  way  forward,  step  by  step,  but  lost 
in  the  contest  its  captain,  who  was  killed  while  lead- 
ing on  his  men,  and  one  lieutenant.  The  latter  had 
seized  the  rifle  of  a  soldier,  and  was  not  shot  down 
until  he  had  killed  three  of  the  enemy.  We  hear  a 
good  many  of  these  tales  of  Italian  heroism — and 
the  Italian  officer  is  undoubtedly  brave — but  we 
never  hear  a  word  of  Arab  heroism.  Yet  what  an 
exploit  that  was  of  250  Arabs  to  break  the  Italian 
line  ;  and  what  a  desperate  fight  they  must  have 
made  of  it  afterwards  in  the  oasis  ! 

In  a  house  which  they  had  seized,  a  group  of  them 
held  out  till  next  day,  and  finally  had  to  be  blown  up 
with  dynamite,  house  and  all.  Not  one  of  that  brave 
250  escaped,  and,  even  if  they  had  escaped,  it  is 
doubtful  if  they  could  have  told  their  story  in  such  a 
way  as  would  appeal  to  Europeans.  For  the  Arab 
is  untruthful  in  a  naive  way.  He  Avill  spin  a  yarn 
(which  nobody  will  believe)  of  having  entered  Tripoli 
and  driven  Caneva  back  to  his  ship  ;  but  of  his 
escaping,  say,  from  a  burning  house  surrounded  by 
Italian  soldiers  he  will  say  nothing.  And  he  may  be 
sure  that  the  Italians  will  say  nothing. 

But  it  was  not  Italian  courage  which  saved  the 
situation.  It  was  the  naval  battery  and  the  Krupp 
battery  which  prevented  Nesciat  Bey  from  rein- 
forcing his  men  who  were  fighting  in  the  oasis. 

As  soon  as  a  gap  was  opened  in  the  Italian  flank, 
considerable  numbers  of  white-robed  Arabs  appeared 


THE  BATTLE  OF  SIDI  MESSRI         221 

on  the  crest  of  the  distant  sand-hills  and  moved  rapidly 
towards  the  breach.  If  they  had  got  in,  the  fate  of 
the  Italian  army  was  sealed.  But  the  quick-firing 
battery  was  hurried  from  the  Cavalry  Barracks :  the 
Golzio  battery,  which  had  only  been  landed  at 
Tripoli  that  very  day,  was  rushed  out  to  Bumeliana, 
and  managed  to  reach  that  point  despite  the  efforts 
of  two  brave  and  intelligent  Arabs  concealed  in  a 
house,  to  shoot  the  horses.  At  Bumeliana  this  new 
battery  proved  very  useful ;  and  meanwhile  the  two 
other  batteries,  which  had  been  installed  at  Bumeliana 
since  the  occupation,  began  to  shell  the  advancing 
Arabs  with  deadly  effect. 

It  was  impossible  for  Nesciat  Bey  to  send  rein- 
forcements, considering  how  frightful  was  the  Italian 
artillery  fire  from  Bumeliana.  The  marine  battery 
there,  under  Captain  Savino,  swept  the  Desert  and 
the  sand-hills.  All  the  trenches  vomited  rifle-fire. 
The  splendid  field-artillery,  which  had  by  this  time 
been  placed  to  the  left  of  the  naval  battery,  prevented 
the  advance  of  any  Turkish  reinforcements  from 
the  sand-dunes.  The  great  guns  of  the  men-o'-war 
threw,  every  moment,  shells  which  burst  among  the 
enemy,  hurling  high  into  the  air  mingled  clouds  of 
sand  and  smoke.  The  machine-guns  rattled  inces- 
santly. 

The  position  of  the  field-artillery  was  several  times 
shifted  so  as  to  let  the  Turks  have  the  full  benefit 
of  it.  Sometimes  the  wheels  of  the  cannon  stuck 
in  the  sand,  but  on  these  occasions  even  the  officers 
put  their  shoulders,  literally,  to  the  wheel,  and  helped 
their  men  to  move  the  guns.  Amid  the  explosions 
one  could  hear  the  hoarse  cries  of  the  Italian  leaders, 
"  Forza  !  Alzo  !  "  Sometimes  numbers  were  called 
out, — the  distances  at  which  the  shells  were  regulated 


222         ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

to  burst.  The  deadly  shrapnel  searched  everywhere 
for  the  enemy.  It  burst  on  the  edge  of  the  sand-hills, 
it  burst  in  the  valleys  behind  the  sand-hills.  Evidently 
there  was  no  refuge  for  the  Turks,  save  underground. 
Yet  sometimes  a  few  of  them  appeared  on  the  crest 
of  a  hill.  Amid  the  smoke  of  a  shell  one  could  often 
see  them  getting  up  and  running.  Nevertheless  they 
continued  to  fire  at  the  Italian  trenches.  But  their 
range  was  too  short,  for  one  could  see  the  sand  knocked 
up  by  their  bullets  fully  a  hundred  yards  from  the 
Italian  lines. 

The  artillery  was  well  served.  It  prevented  a 
concentration  of  the  enemy.  Whenever  a  group  of 
Arabs  got  behind  a  fold  in  the  ground  and  began  to 
fire,  a  shrapnel  shell  exploded  over  their  heads  and 
very  often  silenced  them  forever.  When  they  took 
refuge  in  a  hut  a  couple  of  shells  demolished  the  roof 
and  walls,  and  as  the  little  garrison  ran  away,  its 
members  were  sometimes  stricken  down  by  a  deadly 
rain  of  shrapnel  bullets. 

Finally  the  Arabs  were  driven  back,  but  not  until 
some  of  them  had,  con  incredibile  temerarietd  (with 
incredible  bravery),  as  General  Caneva  says,  come 
to  within  some  thirty  yards  of  the  batteries. 

Nay,  one  Arab  came  so  far  that  he  fell  into  the 
trench,  at  the  bottom  of  which  he  lay  on  his  back, 
dead,  his  face  still  black  with  passion,  his  mouth 
wide  open. 

Another,  a  beardless  youth,  crept  mortally  wounded 
as  far  as  the  Italian  line  under  the  Kaimakan's  house 
at  Henni  and  laid  down  his  blood-stained  head  on 
one  of  the  sacks  of  sand  in  front  of  the  trench,  as  if 
it  were  a  pillow.  One  thought  of  that  Arab  youth, 
whom  Gibbon  tells  us  of,  that  youth  who,  at  the 
siege  of  Emesa,  shouted  that  he  saw  a  black-eyed 


-:    rt 


O 
-     5 


h   c 


THE  BATTLE  OF  SIDI  MESSRI         223 

houri  beckoning  him  on  from  the  gates  of  Paradise, 
and  charged  to  certain  death.  Over  a  thousand 
years  have  passed  since  then,  but  we  find  that 
marvellous  bravery  in  the  Arab  still. 

"  In  this  fearful  combat,"  says  an  Italian  writer, 
"  the  courage  of  our  troops  was  prodigious."  If  so, 
what  must  have  been  the  courage  of  the  catiivo, 
furioso  nemico  (the  bad,  furious  enemy),  as  Signor 
Corradini  calls  the  Arabs?  "E  incredibile  !  "  is 
the  only  phrase  the  Italians  can  think  of  in  this 
connection. 

There  were  only  1500  of  them  attacking  at  this 
time  an  army  of  20,000  men.  Those  20,000  were 
entrenched,  invisible,  and  consequently  enjoyed  an 
enormous  advantage.  Several  of  the  photographs 
which  I  reproduce  in  this  volume  show  how  strong 
the  Italian  trenches  are  and  what  excellent  cover 
they  afford.  By  all  the  laws  of  war  it  is  futile  and 
mad  for  1500  men  to  attack  an  entrenched  force  of 
even  1000.  Here  the  1500  not  only  attacked  20,000, 
but  even  succeeded  in  breaking  the  Italian  line  and  in 
causing,  two  days  afterwards,  a  retreat. 

How  the  invaders  behaved  when  they  were  the 
attacking  party  and  the  Arabs  were  waiting  for 
them,  not  buried,  indeed,  in  trenches,  but  just  lying 
on  the  ground  along  the  edge  of  the  sand-dunes,  is 
told  by  an  Englishman,  Mr.  E.  N.  Bennett,  who  has 
been  on  the  Turkish  side.  Mr.  Bennett  describes 
how  on  December  15th  two  Italian  cruisers  anchored 
close  to  the  beach  at  Sidi  Said,  near  the  Tunisian 
frontier,  and  sent  150  men  ashore.  There  were  in 
the  place  only  thirty -four  Arabs,  who  concealed 
themselves  amid  the  sand-dunes. 

"  Just  as  the  landing-party  commenced  to  climb 
the   dunes,   the  Arabs   opened  fire.     The   officer. 


224        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

badly  wounded,  fell  on  his  knees,  and  a  second 
bullet  killed  him  outright.  The  effect  on  the 
Italians  was  striking.  The  150  men  simply  turned 
tail  and  bolted  in  utter  confusion  to  the  beach, 
hotly  followed  by  thirty-four  Arabs,  who  could 
no  longer  be  restrained  from  pursuit.  The  sailors 
managed  to  carry  off  the  body  of  their  officer  and 
six  killed  and  wounded  comrades,  but  they  left 
on  the  sand  50  picks  and  shovels,  300  cartridges, 
and  a  number    of  sailors'  caps." 

The  Turks  had  seven  old  guns  which  were  not  in 
action  on  the  present  occasion.  Against  those  seven 
old  guns  the  Italians  had  a  fleet  which  could  throw 
any  number  of  ten-inch  shells  among  the  enemy.  A 
single  one  of  the  522-kilogramme  projectiles  of  the 
Re  Umberto  is  capable  of  annihilating  a  whole  brigade 
with  its  fragments  and  its  deleterious  gases.  On 
land  the  Italians  had  at  this  time  seven  batteries 
of  magnificent  field-guns,  nine  batteries  of  mountain- 
guns,  sixteen  machine-guns,  naval  search-lights  to 
sweep  the  seashore  at  night,  search-lights  to  sweep 
the  Desert,  wireless  telegraphy,  telephones,  all  the 
resources  of  science.  As  for  the  Arabs,  they  were 
refused  quarter,  they  were  not  recognised  as  belli- 
gerents, their  white  flags  were  not  respected.  Europe 
allowed  any  amount  of  German  ammunition,  any 
number  of  French  aeroplanes,  to  pass  into  Italy,  but 
did  not  (so  far  as  lay  within  its  power)  allow  a  single 
cartridge  to  cross  the  Egyptian  or  Tunisian  frontiers. 
On  the  Italian  side,  in  Tripolitania,  there  are  four- 
and-twenty  big  brass  generals  with  a  general  staff. 
On  the  Turkish  side  there  is  one  colonel  and  a  few 
staff-officers  devoid  of  all  technical  appliances. 

Not  only  had  the  Arabs  all  these  things  to  contend 
against  on  the  present  occasion.     They  had  also  to 


THE  BATTLE  OF  SIDI  MESSRI         225 

reckon  with  aeroplanes  which  swooped  over  their 
heads,  during  the  combat,  Hke  gigantic  birds  of  prey. 
One  felt  inclined  at  times  to  get  up  and  say  to  the 
Italians  :  "  Now,  look  here,  gentlemen,  excuse  me, 
but  really  this  is  not  fair." 

Worst  of  all,  they  have  to  contend  with  a  system 
of  espionage  which  reaches,  I  am  afraid,  into  their 
own  camp.  Of  some  of  the  Levantines  who  have 
developed  a  sudden  violent  sympathy  for  the  Turks 
and  who  have  gone  to  condole  with  them  in  the 
hinterland  of  Tripoli,  I  am  rather  doubtful.  Of  the 
swarms  of  Maltese,  Greeks,  Frenchmen,  and  Italians 
who  at  Sfax,  Tunis,  Ben-Garden  and  along  the  Tunis- 
Tripolitan  border  seem  to  spend  all  their  time  in 
worming  information  out  of  passing  travellers,  I 
am  not  doubtful  at  all.    They  are  Italian  spies. 

In  studying  this  whole  war,  and  especially  this 
particular  battle,  the  reader  must  not  forget  the 
tremendous  advantage  which  the  Italians  enjoy  by 
reason  of  their  artillery.  The  Arabs  recognise  that 
if  their  artillery  had  been  even  one-tenth  as  strong  as 
that  of  their  enemy  they  would  have  conquered. 

Hence  their  longing  for  foreign  cannon — a  longing 
which  is  never  likely  to  be  gratified  by  importation 
in  the  usual  way,  though  it  is  likely  to  be  gratified 
by  the  capture  of  Italian  field-pieces.  When  the 
German  Red  Cross  lately  Journeyed  through  Tripoli- 
tania  in  order  to  join  the  Turks,  the  constant  chorus 
of  the  Arab  villagers  when  they  saw  the  long  train 
of  camels  laden  with  boxes  (of  medical  stores,  how- 
ever) was  "  Die  Deutschen  bringen  Kanonen  .  .  . 
Gesegnet  seid  Ihr,  die  Ihr  Kanonen  bringt."  ("  The 
Germans  bring  cannon  .  .  .  Blessed  be  ye  who  bring 
your  cannon.") 

One  fact  about  this  battle  may  appeal  to  English- 
Q 


226        ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

men.  It  was  not  till  Sidi  Messri  that  the  Italians 
had  got  their  artillery  ashore,  and  much  of  it  was 
landed  and  placed  in  position  while  the  fight  was 
going  on.  The  invaders  had  thus  to  depend  mostly 
on  mountain-guns  and  on  the  battleships  for  more 
than  three  weeks  after  their  occupation  of  Tripoli 
city.  If  the  Turks  had  got  any  decent  sort  of  artillery 
at  all  they  could  have  pounded  General  Caneva  to 
pieces  in  his  citadel  before  those  three  weeks  had 
come  to  an  end. 

This  shows  how  difficult  it  would  be  for  any 
foreign  Power  to  land  an  expedition  in  England. 
Even  if  the  English  fleet  were  beaten,  the  landing 
of  the  invader's  artillery  would  take  a  long  time, 
and  meanwhile  the  enemy  could  be  annoyed  by 
aeroplanes  and  overwhelmed  by  powerful  artillery 
collected  from  all  parts  of  the  Island  ;  while  English 
torpedo-boats  lurking  in  adjacent  harbours  would 
be  a  perpetual  menace  to  their  landing  operations. 
Steam  has  shortened  the  distance  between  England 
and  the  Continent,  but,  thanks  to  the  number  of  guns, 
aeroplanes,  and  other  heavy  or  bulky  objects  which 
an  army  has  to  bring  with  it,  the  actual  landing  of 
an  expeditionary  force  in  hostile  territory  is  a  much 
more  delicate  operation  now  than  it  was  in  the  days 
of  Julius  Csesar  or  William  the  Conqueror. 


CHAPTER    IX 

HOW   THE   GAP   IN   THE   ITALIAN   LINE 
WAS   CLOSED 

Thus,  thanks  to  their  artillery,  the  Italians  were  able 
to  repel  the  enemy  and  to  defeat  Nesciat  Bey's  bold 
attempt  to  outflank  and  destroy  the  84th  Infantry. 
For  the  destruction  of  this  particular  regiment  was 
the  object  of  the  Turkish  leader's  strategy  at  Sidi 
Messri,  as  the  destruction  of  the  11th  Bersaglieri 
had  been  his  object  at  Sharashett  on  the  23rd. 

Lieutenant  Franchini  reoccupied  Gemal  Bey's 
house  with  a  portion  of  the  7th  company,  but  was 
immediately  besieged  there.  In  the  broken  ground 
about  the  house  the  dismounted  cavalry  and  part 
of  the  12th  company  also  found  themselves  in  dif- 
ficulties. Besides,  the  Arabs  held  some  adjoining 
houses,  especially  one  known  as  the  Sokt. 

A  company  of  sappers  was  sent  to  the  rescue,  but 
it  would  have  been  overwhelmed  along  with  the 
detachments  which  it  had  come  to  support  had  not 
a  colonel  sent  after  it  from  another  part  of  the  line 
the  3rd  battalion  of  the  82nd  Infantry  Regiment. 
The  12th  company  of  the  84th  was  already  on  the 
spot,  and  finally  all  those  forces  managed  to  surround 
the  houses  occupied  by  the  enemy,  to  close  the  gap 
in  the  line,  and  to  prevent  any  more  Arabs  from 
entering. 

This  movement  could  not  have  been  carried  out 

227 


228        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR  A   DESERT 

had  not  the  3rd  battalion  of  the  82nd  Regiment 
arrived  on  the  scene  in  time.  It  had  been  sent  to  the 
rescue,  but  had  been  stopped  by  Arab  irregulars  mid- 
way in  the  oasis  exactly  as  it  had  been  stopped  the 
day  before.  To-day,  however,  Captain  Robiony,  the 
commander  of  the  detachment,  esegui  brillantemente 
la  sua  missione  (brilliantly  carried  out  his  mission), 
thanks  to  uno  stratagemma  riuscito  felicemente  (a 
stratagem  which  succeeded  happily). 

"  A  crowd  of  some  thirty  Arabs,  mostly  women, 
children,  and  old  people,  were  passing  swiftly  along 
a  side  road,  having  abandoned  their  houses  and 
being  anxious  to  reach  the  city.  The  captain 
stopped  them,  put  them  at  the  head  of  his  column, 
and  made  them  march  towards  Henni.  The  effect 
was  miraculous.  All  opposition  ceased.  The  houses, 
the  olives,  the  palms,  the  fig-trees  ceased  to  vomit 
fire.  This  company  which  would  otherwise  have 
been  obliged  to  fight  all  day  like  the  battalion 
which  had  been  sent  to  carry  succour  to  Sharashett 
on  the  23rd,  and  which  did  not  reach  its  destina- 
tion until  the  evening,  when  the  battle  was  over, 
reached  Henni  at  ten  o'clock.  Those  hostages 
were  afterwards  seated  in  a  circle  on  the  ground 
to  the  right  of  the  soldiers.  Incurious,  mute,  and 
motionless  under  their  white  head-dresses,  they 
seemed  to  be  immersed  in  a  profound  and  bestial 
stupor." 

No  wonder  !  They  were  probably  surprised  at 
their  treatment  by  the  nation  that  has  "  thrice 
civilised  the  world,"  and  which,  having  used  them 
as  a  shield  against  the  Arabs  firing  in  the  oasis,  now 
kept  them  at  the  front  as  a  shield  against  the  Arabs 
firing  from  the  Desert. 


THE  GAP  IN  THE  ITALIAN  LINE      229 

The  above  quotation  is  taken  from  a  description 
written  by  one  of  the  best  and  most  Hberal-minded 
of  the  Italian  writers  who  deal  with  this  war,  Signor 
Giuseppe  Bevione.  Signor  Bevione  thinks  that 
Captain  Robiony's  idea  was  "  uri  idea  genialissima" 
which  "  would  have  saved  us  many  lives  if  it  had 
occurred  to  somebody  else  on  the  23rd." 

All  the  Italian  writers  who  describe  this  incident 
are  enthusiastic  about  it.  But  surely  it  was  unfair, 
since,  on  the  previous  two  days,  every  Arab  man 
in  that  portion  of  the  oasis  had  been  killed  or  im- 
prisoned, and  every  weapon  in  the  Arab  houses 
seized,  even  the  women's  scissors  and  the  men's 
razors.  The  firing  on  Captain  Robiony's  party  came, 
therefore,  from  desert  Arabs  who  had  broken  in 
through  the  gap  at  Gemal  Bey's  house,  and  who 
should  have  been  considered  as  regular  Turkish 
soldiers.^ 

After  the  gap  in  their  line  had  been  closed  it  was 
comparatively  easy  for  the  Italians  to  crush  the 
small  number  of  Arabs  who  remained  in  the  oasis. 
There  were  about  forty  of  them  to  every  Arab,  and 
as  most  of  the  natives  had  used  up  all  their  ammuni- 

^  Like  the  honest  German  soldier  that  he  is,  Von  Gottberg,  of  the 
"  Lokal-Anzeiger,"  pours  vitriolic  contempt  on  the  men  responsible 
for  this  cowardly  trick :— Statt  des  Tambours,  der  an  die  Spitze  der 
Kolonne  gehdrte,  nahm  ein  Fiihrer  arabische  Weiber  und  Kinder  vor 
die  Front  und  brachte  mit  ihnen  als  Schild  seine  Leute  an  den  Feind. 
Italienische  Korrespondenten  berichteten  davon  unter  der  Uebersch- 
rift:  "GelungeneKriegslist."  (Messaggero  vom28.  Oktober.)  Neutrale 
Augenzeugen  waren  entsetzt  und  empdrt.  Zu  wundern  brauchte  sich 
niemand,  der  das  Bild  hinter  der  Front  gesehen  hatte,  denn  die 
Moral  auch  der  besten  Truppe  ist  nur  ein  briichig  Ding. 

In  the  "  Messaggero,"  October  28th,  under  the  heading  "  A  Strata- 
gem which  succeeded  "  {Stratlayemma  lUuscito),  we  are  told  that 
when  a  company  of  the  82nd  Infantry  Regiment  was  sent  to  the 
front,  the  captain  had  to  pass  through  an  unsafe  part  of  the  oasis,  so 
he  *'  adoperd  uno  strait agemma  die  7-msct  felicemente.  E<jU  raccolse 
una  quarantina  di  Arabi  fra  nomini  e  donne  ed  alcuni  abitanti  che  &d 
trovavano  net  yiardini  dell'  oasi  e  It  costrinse  a  marciare  tnnanzi  alia 
propria  compagnia."    (He  hit   upon  a  plan  which   succeeded  very 


230        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

tion,  the  Sicilians  had  a  great  chance  of  performing 
the  usual  "  prodigies  of  valour,"  with  perfect  safety 
to  themselves.  Colonel  Spinelli  surrounded  one  group 
of  Arabs  with  three  half-squadrons  of  dismounted 
Lodi  cavalry  and  a  detachment  from  the  last  company 
of  the  82nd.  The  Arabs  were  all  killed,  or  captured  in 
order  to  be  killed  later.  No  mercy  was  ever  given 
to  any  of  those  brave  men,  though  one  would  think 
that  they  had  every  right  to  be  considered  as  com- 
batants. They  did  not  wear  a  uniform,  but  neither 
did  the  Boers,  yet  Boers  who  were  captured  when  their 
powder  was  exhausted  were  never  put  to  death  by 
British  troops. 

One  tremendous  triumph  of  the  Italian  arms  this 
day  has  been  loudly  trumpeted  by  the  Italian  Press, 
by  the  officers  invalided  home,  and  probably  by 
Gabriele  d'  Annunzio.  This  was  the  capture  of  la 
handier  a  verde  del  Projeta  (the  green  flag  of  the 
Prophet)  by  the  gallant  8th  company  of  the  84th. 
Soul-stirring  descriptions  have  been  written  about 
the  manner  in  which  that  gallant  band  of  heroes 
cut  to  pieces  the  Arabs  who  clustered  round  that 
sacred  emblem  and  captured  the  treasure.  Even  the 
generally  restrained  and  accurate  Corrado  Zoli  tells 
us  how  "  a  party  of  the  84th  succeeded  in  taking  a 
green  flag  of  the  Prophet  carried  by  a  group  of  Arabs." 
He  omits  to  tell  us  that  the  Arabs  were  all  dead. 

nicely.  He  collected  some  forty  Arabs,  men,  women  and  other 
inhabitants,  whom  he  found  in  the  gardens  of  the  oasis,  and  forced 
them  to  march  in  front  of  his  company.) 

This  is  the  same  incident.  All  the  Italian  papers  refer  to  it  with 
genuine  enthusiasm.  This  fact  shows  how  hopeless  are  the  arguments 
about  the  massacres  that  have  been  carried  on  during  the  last  six 
months  between  Britishers  on  the  one  side  and  Italians  on  the  other. 
Both  sides  differ  as  to  first  principles.  It  would  be  as  hard  to  per- 
suade a  Sicilian  soldier  that  it  is  wrong  to  go  out  hunting  oasis 
Arabs  with  a  gun  as  to  persuade  a  Neapolitan  cab-driver  that  he 
should  not  ill-use  his  horse. 


THE  GAP  IN  THE  ITALIAN  LINE      231 

On  October  27th  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior  at 
Rome  (which  had  been  holding  up  all  independent 
accounts  of  the  previous  day's  fighting  and  surpassing 
even  its  own  previous  record  by  the  energy  with 
which  it  wielded  the  censorial  blue  pencil)  kindly 
allowed  the  Italian  Press  to  have  a  little  thing  of 
its  own  composition.  This  little  thing  was  headed 
by  the  word  "  Official  "  and  was  dated  "  Tripoli, 
October  26th,  evening."  It  purported  to  give  a  fair 
summary  of  the  fighting,  but  totally  forgot,  for  some 
reason  or  other,  to  say  a  single  word  about  the  Italian 
line  having  been  broken.  It  certainly  did  not  forget, 
however,  the  legend  about  the  famous  "  handier  a 
verde.''  "  The  8th  company  of  the  84th  Infantry 
captured,"  it  says,  "  in  a  brilliant  bayonet  attack, 
the  green  flag  carried  by  the  Arabs." 

I  do  not  know  if  any  one  belonging  to  the  8th  com- 
pany has  been  left  undecorated,  but  I  believe  the  true 
facts  of  the  case  are  as  follows  :  The  green  flag  was 
found,  after  the  battle,  underneath  a  heap  of  Arab 
dead,  piled  in  front  of  Gemal  Bey's  house.  There  was 
no  brilliant  charge  on  the  part  of  the  Italians.  In- 
visible themselves,  their  artillery  and  rifle  fire  had 
accomplished  for  them  this  heroic  deed. 

But  occasionally  the  Italians  came  across  Arabs 
who  were  not  dead.  At  a  cross-roads  in  the  oasis,  the 
12th  company  of  the  84th  suddenly  encountered  a 
group  of  Arabs  about  equal  in  number  to  themselves. 
Had  the  enemy  been  unarmed  oasis  Arabs,  the  Italians 
would  undoubtedly  have  pulverised  them  with  great 
determination  and  bravery ;  the  Italian  leader 
would  have  shown  himself  to  be  a  combination  of 
Napoleon  I  and  Bismarck ;  and  his  subordinate 
officers  would  have  proved  their  right  to  be  called 
"  descendants  of  the  Scipios." 


232        ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

Captain  Faitini,  a  genial  and  observant  officer, 
who  was  walking  at  the  head  of  his  column  with  a 
monocle  in  his  eye,  was  at  first,  indeed,  under  the 
impression  that  these  Arabs  were  the  usual  batch 
of  dismal  "  friendlies  "  coming  in  to  be  shot  and 
being  meanwhile  prodded  in  the  rear  by  Italian 
bayonets.  But  when  they  had  approached  nearer 
he  made  the  horribly  unpleasant  discovery  that  the 
scoundrels  were  armed.  Upon  this,  "  the  heirs  of 
ancient  Rome  "  ran  like  rabbits,  losing  their  leader, 
Captain  Faitini,  as  well  as  Lieutenant  Bellini  and 
a  considerable  number  of  the  rank  and  file.  Most 
of  the  survivors  climbed  trees  and  remained  aloft 
till  a  company  of  the  82nd  arrived,  whereupon  the 
enemy  retired.  Of  course,  if  Captain  Faitini  had 
only  had  Captain  Robiony's  idea  genialissima  of 
sheltering  himself  behind  a  crowd  of  Arab  women 
and  children,  he  might  have  been  alive  to  this  day 
and  wearing  a  medal.  ^ 

The  Lodi  cavalry  also  lost  heavily.  Among  the 
officers  killed  were  Lieutenants  Solaroli  and  Granatei. 
Captain  Gandolfi  was  wounded. 

The   clearing   of   the   oasis   was   a   succession   of 

1  Writing  in  "The  Nation,"  in  March,  1912,  Mr.  Richard  Bagot 
accused  me  of  having  accepted  the  testimony  of  Arabs.  I  answered 
that  when,  fifty  years  ago,  Northern  Italy  was  trying  to  shake  off  the 
Austrian  yoke,  Enghshmen  did  not  swear  by  the  Ballplatz  version 
of  events  and  close  their  ears  to  the  Italian  story.  And,  as  to  the 
incident  which  I  have  described  above,  what  would  Mr.  Bagot  have 
me  do  ?  It  is  quite  certain  that  250  Arabs  broke  the  Italian  line. 
Their  action  was  a  miracle  of  bravery.  Would  Mr.  Bagot  have  me 
turn  a  deaf  ear  to  one  of  these  250  heroes  in  case  I  came  across  him, 
and  say  :  *'  No,  no,  don't  give  me  your  account  of  the  affair.  I  must 
see  that  gentleman  up  the  tree.  I  must  get  his  version  and  no 
other. " 

Unfortunately,  it  is  "the  gentleman  up  the  tree"  who  has  a 
practical  monopoly  of  all  the  news  relating  to  this  war.  As  a  local 
poet  has  it : 

Silent  the  Arab  fights,  and  silent  dies. 

His  enemy  descends  the  tree,  and  lies. 


THE  GAP  IN  THE  ITALIAN  LINE      233 

Sidney  Street  sieges.  The  Arabs  sometimes  got 
into  houses,  and  it  needed  some  strength  of  mind 
to  tackle  them,  for  they  invariably  killed  somebody 
before  they  were  disarmed,  and  then  they  died 
happy.  In  one  house  there  were  forty  people.  Two 
soldiers  got  on  to  the  flat  roof  and  fired  down  the 
stairs,  but  as  nobody  would  venture  to  enter  the 
building  it  was  determined  to  burn  it  down.  Branches 
of  palm-trees  and  piles  of  wood  were  placed  before 
the  door,  and  a  match  was  applied.  The  Arabs  were 
all  driven  out  by  the  flames  and  were  all  riddled  with 
bullets  as  they  left.  In  some  cases  the  Italians  could 
not  approach  near  enough  to  set  the  house  on  fire,  and 
the  building  had  to  be  smashed  by  means  of  cannon 
or  blown  up  with  dynamite.  At  frequent  intervals 
during  the  next  two  days  the  dull  roar  of  dynamite 
was  the  only  epitaph  of  little  Arab  garrisons  holding 
out  with  matchless  tenacity  and  laughing  at  the 
death  of  fire  when  it  came. 

And  it  came  to  many.  Death  stalked  in  those  days 
among  the  palms  of  the  oasis.  Amid  the  abandoned 
courts  of  the  ruined  houses  one  continually  came 
across  corpses,  the  arms  contorted,  the  red,  trampled 
fezzes  lying  at  a  distance  amid  the  grass.  Sometimes 
one  lifted  a  fez  and  immediately  threw  it  down  again 
with  energy,  for  it  was  soaked  with  blood  or  a  portion 
of  the  grey  matter  of  the  brain  fell  out  of  it. 

Individual  Arab  soldiers  were  run  to  earth  in  all 
sorts  of  queer  places,  and  always  owing  to  the  fact 
that  they  never  attempted  to  hide,  that  they  in- 
variably continued  "  sniping  "  until  their  last  cart- 
ridge was  gone.  Then  they  rushed  out  knife  in 
hand  and  stabbed  the  first  soldier  they  met. 

But  sometimes  they  were  discovered  before  they 
had  reached  this  stage.    A  group  of  soldiers  stationed 


234         ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

in  the  oasis  heard  bullets  whizzing  past  them  at 
regular  intervals,  and  after  several  of  their  company 
had  been  wounded  they  proceeded  to  investigate. 
They  searched,  but  without  result,  a  white  native 
hut,  from  which  the  shots  had  seemed  to  come.  It 
was  dark  and  deserted,  and  they  were  just  about  to 
leave  it  when  a  Sicilian  sergeant,  who  had  command 
of  the  party,  noticed  something  white  stirring  in 
a  recess  like  a  dog-kennel.  Then  a  sudden,  fierce 
rush  on  the  part  of  the  sergeant  and  his  men  ;  a  short, 
sharp,  violentissimo  struggle,  in  course  of  which  the 
dog-kennel  went  to  pieces  ;  and  lo  !  the  panting 
sergeant  stood  gripping  an  Arab  whose  hair  was 
dishevelled  and  who  had  had  half  the  clothes  torn  off 
his  back.  The  Arab  had  a  Mauser,  still  hot,  in  his 
hand,  and  around  his  waist  was  a  belt  holding  some 
fifty  cartridges. 

"  Now,  don't  be  alarmed  !  Don't  let  us  disturb 
you,  sir !  "  murmured  the  Sicilian,  with  bland  irony. 

But  the  prisoner  was  absolutely  undisturbed.  He 
looked  the  soldiers  tranquilly  in  the  eyes,  and  though, 
of  course,  he  read  his  death-sentence  on  every  hirsute 
face,  he  only  smiled.  They  were  standing  in  a  little 
white  Arab  courtyard,  full  of  sunshine.  The  sky 
above  was  marvellously  blue.  The  palm-trees  were 
filled  with  birds,  which  also  hopped  about  the  deserted 
yard,  and  on  top  of  the  wall.  Then  a  deep  silence 
fell  while  the  Sicilians  made  a  few  rapid  prepara- 
tions. 

"  Pronti  !  "  (ready),  said  the  sergeant. 

The  men  levelled  their  shining  gun-barrels.  The 
Arab,  still  smiling,  still  contemptuous  in  his  coolness, 
was  placed  with  his  back  against  a  wall.  .  .  .  The 
air  was  suddenly  rent  by  a  violent  rattle  of  musketry 
which  reverberated  like  thunder  through  the  empty 


THE  GAP  IN  THE  ITALIAN  LINE      235 

house.  A  big  patch  of  plaster  fell  from  the  wall. 
The  birds  flew  away  screaming.  The  Arab  lay  on 
his  back  on  the  ground,  his  legs  doubled  up  under- 
neath him.  His  blood  was  trickling  into  a  little 
kitchen-sink  hard  by.  His  pale  brown  face  was 
thrown  back  and  the  chin  was  tilted  sharply  up- 
wards. The  smile  was  gone.  The  lips  were  drawn 
tightly.  The  white  teeth  were  exposed.  They  were 
like  the  white  teeth  of  a  dog  killed  when  about  to 
bite. 

As  the  Arabs  outside  fell  back,  the  Italians  made 
a  feeble  attempt  at  a  counter-attack  in  order,  it  was 
asserted,  a  tagliar  la  fuga  al  nemico  (to  cut  off  the 
enemy's  flight).  It  was  a  ludicrous  exhibition,  re- 
minding one  of  a  rabbit  coming  out  of  its  safe  burrow 
in  order  to  cut  off  the  flight  of  a  terrier  which  had 
been  vainly  trying  to  interview  it. 

A  strong  detachment  of  the  40th  Regiment  ad- 
vanced very  slowly  and  gingerly  over  the  sand,  their 
brown  clothes  showing  up  against  the  grey  desert. 
In  front,  like  a  procession  of  sandwich-men,  went  a 
small,  dispirited  advance  guard ;  behind  trailed  the 
bulk  of  the  company.  Slowly  they  climbed  the  crest 
of  the  nearest  sand-dune,  the  great  shells  of  the 
battleships  ploughing  up  the  desert  in  front  of  them. 
Then  they  began  to  fire  with  quite  unusual  "  dash  " 
— to  use  a  word  which  has  seen  a  good  deal  of  service 
in  this  war — for,  happily,  the  enemy  was  now  out  of 
sight.  Another  company  advanced  and  gained  the 
dunes  towards  the  sea.  It  was  now  ten  o'clock,  and 
the  battle  was  at  an  end. 

Tears  of  joy  now  stood  in  the  eyes  of  the  Italians 
and  they  embraced  one  another  with  enthusiasm. 
They  discussed  the  taking  of  the  "  handiera  verde  del 
Prof  eta.'*     They   exchanged   tales   of   heroism   and 


236        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

adventure.  One  of  them  told  how  in  the  oasis  he 
had  killed  five  Arabs  with  his  own  hand.  He  did  not 
say  whether  they  were  armed  or  unarmed.  Another 
told  a  fable  of  a  Turkish  officer,  disguised  as  a  Moham- 
medan woman,  who  had  attempted  to  penetrate  to 
the  town,  and  he  detailed  at  great  length  how  this 
"  woman  "  had  been  questioned  and  what  she  had 
said.  A  third  span  a  long  yarn  about  a  bogus  Arab 
funeral  which  was  seized  on  its  way  to  the  town  and 
quickly  turned  into  a  real  funeral  on  a  large  scale, 
owing  to  the  fact  that  the  coffin  was  found  to  contain 
only  Mausers. 

Another  man  followed  this  up  with  a  story  of  how 
a  bogus  mendicant,  afterwards  identified  as  a  Turkish 
soldier,  had  got  as  far  as  the  bread  market  before  he 
was  arrested  and  deprived  of  an  interesting  Arabic 
letter  which  he  carried.  Many  tales  were  told  of  the 
effetto  terribile  of  the  bombs  hurled  by  the  aeroplanes, 
and  of  the  narrow  escapes  of  the  aviators  from  the 
enemy's  bullets. 

But,  of  course,  the  atti  di  valor e,  the  "  acts  of 
valour,"  were  most  discussed — each  man  candidly 
telling  tales  about  himself.  Sometimes  popular 
officers  were  spoken  of.  The  deeds  of  il  piu  puro 
eroismo  (the  most  pure  heroism)  on  the  part  of  the 
officers  were  numerosissimi. 

Lieutenant  Manera  of  the  Carabinieri  had  retaken 
the  trenches  and  made  200  prisoners.  Armed  with  a 
rifle  taken  from  a  Turk,  Lieutenant  di  Palma  of  the 
Engineers  had  held  out  for  five  hours  in  Fort  Messri. 

Captain  Caracciolo  had  had  two  horses  shot  under 
him.  At  one  time  he  and  three  others  were  sur- 
rounded by  twenty  Arabs,  but  i  quattro  valorosi 
(the  four  brave  men)  did  not  lose  their  presence  of 
mind.     With  rifle  and  revolver  shots  they  put  to 


THE  GAP  IN  THE  ITALIAN  LINE      237 

flight  their  assailants,  who  left  five  dead  and  three 
seriously  wounded  on  the  field  of  battle. 

Horsemen  and  infantry  performed  prodigi  di 
valore.  They  sometimes  ran  out  of  the  trenches  just 
to  have  a  slap  at  the  enemy,  and  then  returned  un- 
injured. 

All  the  above  stories  may  be  found  in  the  jingoistic 
"  Giornale  d'  Italia."  The  other  Italian  papers 
(and,  of  course,  the  "  New  York  Herald  ")  contain 
foolish  fabrications  about  the  "  cruel  pressure " 
which  the  Turks  brought  to  bear  on  the  Arabs  in 
order  to  make  them  fight  :  how  they  kept  native 
families  as  hostages  :  how  they  themselves  remained 
in  the  rear  while  forcing  the  Arabs  to  advance. 

Legends  like  these  gather  around  every  battle, 
and  their  growth  is  encouraged  by  every  wise  com- 
mander. Sometimes  it  is  the  commander  himself 
who  starts  them.  During  a  critical  period  at  the 
battle  of  Liaoyang,  I  remember  a  wild  rumour  being 
brought  to  us  on  Shao-shan  Hill  by  a  staff-officer. 
It  was  to  the  effect  that  General  Stoessel  had  broken 
out  of  Port  Arthur,  was  coming  north  with  his  army, 
and  might  be  expected  every  moment.  The  Russian 
soldiers  cheered  wildly,  but  Colonel  Waters,  one  of 
the  British  attaches,  damped  the  prevalent  enthusiasm 
by  an  innocent  inquiry  as  to  whether  Stoessel  and  his 
legions  were  coming  in  balloons. 

In  old  times,  unknown  privates  with  a  poetic 
imagination  invented  or  dreamt  those  thrilling 
stories.  Poets  afterwards  furbished  them  up,  and 
possibly  those  furbished-up  versions  are  the  only 
accounts  of  some  ancient  combats  that  have  reached 
us. 

In  modern  times,  however,  these  legends  are 
generally  turned  out  by  War  Offices  and  other  official 


238        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

abstractions,  and  have  no  poetic  value  whatsoever. 
The  torrent  of  official  mendacity  which  one  en- 
counters in  this  war  makes  one  inclined  to  say  that 
war  is  falsehood.  Some  days  ago  an  Italian  aero- 
plane scattered  among  the  Arabs  thousands  of 
Arabic  leaflets  whereon  was  printed  a  statement 
signed  by  the  Italian  Prime  Minister  and  the  Italian 
Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs,  to  the  effect  that  Italy 
was  the  richest  and  most  powerful  country  in  Europe 
and  that  it  was  no  use  for  the  Arabs  to  continue  the 
war,  since  the  Italian  fleet  had  just  sunk  sixteen 
Ottoman  transports  ! 

The  Italian  losses  in  this  engagement  were  par- 
ticularly heavy,  especially  among  the  officers.  The 
most  distinguished  of  the  officers  that  fell  was  Captain 
Pietro  Verri  of  the  General  Staff,  who  had  been  con- 
nected with  the  Secret  Service  Bureau  in  Tripoli. 
Captain  Verri  had  been  a  Secret  Agent  in  Eritrea, 
Aden,  China,  Trieste,  and  Tripoli,  and  he  enjoyed 
among  all  who  knew  him  a  great  reputation  for 
bravery  and  for  ability.  Just  before  the  bombard- 
ment he  had  come  to  Tripoli  under  the  name  of 
Vincenzo  Parisio,  and  under  the  title  of  "  Inspector 
of  the  Italian  Post-offices."  His  object  was,  of 
course,  to  collect  all  the  information  he  could  on  the 
distribution  of  the  Turkish  forces  and  the  armament 
of  the  Turkish  forts.  The  Italian  War  Office  had 
already  got  the  fullest  details  on  those  points,  but  it 
wanted  to  verify  them  and  bring  them  up  to  date. 
Sometimes  alone,  sometimes  accompanied  by  Signor 
Saman,  the  dragoman  of  the  Italian  Consulate, 
Captain  Verri  had  travelled  on  horseback  through 
all  the  country  around  Tripoli,  from  Zenzur  on  one 
side  to  Tagiura  on  the  other,  and  had  got  the  most 
exact  details  of  all  the  batteries  and  all  the  forts. 


THE  GAP  IN  THE  ITALIAN  LINE      239 

I  may  add,  by  the  way,  that  similar  postal  or 
other  "  inspectors  "  were,  I  dare  say,  sent  by  the 
Italian  Government  to  Derna,  Benghazi,  and  all  the 
other  places  on  the  coast,  while  "  scientific  "  and 
"  commercial  "  missions  were  certainly  sent  inland. 
All  these  "  missions  "  were  allowed  by  the  Turks  to 
go  where  they  liked,  nevertheless  Italy  was,  ac- 
cording to  her  own  indignant  statement,  reluctantly 
forced  into  war  on  account  of  the  difficulties  thrown 
by  Turkey  in  the  way  of  her  commercial  exploitation 
of  Tripolitania. 

Captain  Verri  seems  to  have,  at  this  time,  worked 
hand  in  glove  with  Vice-Consul  Galli,  the  pompous 
little  representative  of  Italy  in  Tripoli.  Galli,  who 
was  himself  engaged  almost  entirely  in  Secret  Service 
work,  made  much  of  his  mysterious  guest  whose 
visits  appealed  to  his  Florentine  thirst  for  intrigue, 
masks,  midnight  conferences,  and  melodramatic 
situations. 

Shortly  before  the  bombardment,  the  Italian  Vice- 
Consul  was  standing  with  a  journalist  on  the  terrace 
of  his  Consulate  watching  the  lights  on  the  Italian 
battleships  when  Signor  Galli  was  hailed  by  a  tall, 
thin,  elegantly  dressed  civilian,  with  a  nervous, 
energetic  manner.  Thereupon  Galli  turned  with  his 
most  mysterious  air  towards  the  receptive  corre- 
spondent and  said,  "  Never  tell  anybody  about  this 
person  whom  you  have  often  seen  with  me.  A  single 
word  might  cost  him  his  head."  The  stranger  was, 
of  course,  "  Vincenzo  Parisio." 

This  spy  left  Tripoli  with  the  Consul,  but  soon 
returned  as  Captain  Verri  of  the  General  Staff.  He 
was  the  first  to  land  in  Tripoli,  having  come  ashore 
before  the  others,  at  Fort  Hamidie  in  order  to  see  if 
the  old  torpedo-station  there  had  been  destroyed  by 


240        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

the  bombardment.  He  afterwards  drew  up  the  plans 
for  the  first  defence  of  TripoH  by  the  bluejackets. 
But  though  he  first  fortified  Bumeliana  and  fixed  the 
lines  for  the  future  trenches,  he  was  strongly  in 
favour  of  an  advance  into  the  Desert.  He  thought 
that  the  scattered  bands  of  Turks  could  easily  be 
captured  or  dispersed  before  they  had  had  a  chance 
of  rousing  the  Arabs.  There  is  something  to  be  said 
in  favour  of  this  view.  Either  Italy  was  or  was  not 
in  a  condition  to  take  some  part  of  Tripolitania 
beyond  a  few  towns  on  the  sea-coast.  If  she  was, 
she  should  have  advanced.  If  she  was  not,  then  she 
should  not  have  made  war.  But  General  Caneva 
believed  in  slow  methods,  and  refused  to  be  guided 
by  the  advice  of  his  more  enterprising  subordinate. 

There  was  something  of  a  mystery  about  the 
death  of  this  capable  officer — I  mean,  of  course, 
Captain  Verri.  The  most  important  object  of  his 
ante-bellum  mission  to  Tripoli  was  to  ascertain  if  the 
Arabs  would  assist  the  Turks,  and  he  is  said  to  have 
reported  that  they  would  not.  The  events  of  October 
23rd  came,  in  consequence,  as  a  great  disappoint- 
ment to  him,  and  it  is  said  that,  as  a  result  of  that 
disappointment,  he  committed  suicide  on  the  26th. 

But  the  explanation  given  by  his  friends  is  this  : 
Though  exceptionally  well  qualified  by  nature  to 
discharge  the  duties  of  a  Secret  Service  agent,  he 
had  never  liked  that  work  very  much  and  had  always 
desired  to  command  men  in  the  field,  to  lead  soldiers 
against  the  enemy.  I  dare  say  that  most  military 
officers  who  are  ordered  to  devote  themselves  to 
espionage  feel  very  often  in  the  same  way. 

On  the  morning  of  the  26th  he  happened  to  be  the 
guest  of  Colonel  Fara  at  Henni,  and  during  the 
progress  of  the  fight  he  saw  a  detachment  of  the 


THE  GAP  IN  THE  ITALIAN  LINE      241 

enemy  moving  around  towards  Sharashett  in  order 
to  outflank  the  Bersaglieri.  Colonel  Fara  deter- 
mined to  send  to  his  left  a  company  of  marines  from 
the  Sicilia,  and  Captain  Verri  begged  for  permission 
to  lead  them.  The  permission  was  given,  but  Captain 
Verri  exposed  himself  needlessly  in  the  trenches  and 
was  shot  dead,  no  less  than  twenty  of  his  little  detach- 
ment being  killed  or  wounded. 

The  heavy  losses  among  the  Italian  officers  were 
probably  due  to  their  rashness  in  exposing  them- 
selves, as  well  as  to  the  probable  fact  that  the  Turks 
and  Arabs  had  been  instructed  to  pick  off  as  many 
officers  as  possible.  It  was  always  easy  to  distinguish 
the  Italian  officers  by  their  uniform,  while,  on  the 
other  hand,  it  was  impossible  to  make  out  who  were 
the  leaders  of  the  Turks,  for  each  Turkish  officer 
wore  an  Arab  dress,  had  a  rifle  like  his  men,  and 
was  in  no  wise  distinguishable  from  the  rank  and  file. 
Moreover,  the  Italian  officers  stood  up  in  the  trenches, 
while  the  Turkish  officers  wisely  availed  themselves 
of  every  inch  of  cover. 

Once  during  the  battle  of  Sidi  Messri  an  Arab,  at 
the  end  of  a  line  of  the  enemy  advancing  against 
Henni,  was  observed  to  wave  a  rifle  as  if  it  were  a 
sword  and  to  give  at  the  same  time  some  commands 
to  his  companions.  His  action  cost  him  his  life,  for 
the  Italian  sharp-shooters  at  once  concluded  that  he 
was  an  officer,  and  never  rested  till  they  had  picked 
him  off.  Beneath  the  rough  white  dress  which 
covered  each  of  the  Arab  dead,  was  sometimes  found 
the  dress  of  a  Turkish  officer. 

Turks  and  Arabs  waste  ammunition  frightfully, 
but  in  comparison  with  the  Italians  they  fired  on 
this  occasion  with  great  care  and  never  at  random. 
The  Italians  consoled  themselves  by  saying  that  this 


242        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

was  owing  to  the  fact  that  they  had  not  got  too  much 
ammunition.  The  aviators  reported  that  whenever 
an  Arab  fell,  one  of  his  companions  always  took  the 
fallen  man's  cartridge-belt,  and  this  confirmed  the 
invaders  in  the  belief  that  the  enemy  was  near  his 
last  cartridge.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Arabs 
shot  in  the  oasis  were  sometimes  found  to  possess  a 
very  great  quantity  of  ammunition,  and,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  Turks  in  Tripolitania  have  cartridges  to 
burn. 

Thus  ended  the  battle  of  Sidi  Messri.  What  was  the 
result  of  this  great  Italian  "  victory  "  ? 

"  To-day,"  writes  one  Italian  author  on  the  28th, 
"  in  consequence  of  the  victorious  action  of  the 
26th,  all  the  east  front  has  been  brought  back 
about  a  mile  and  a  half  towards  the  city  so  as  to 
form  a  straight  line  from  the  tombs  of  the  Kara- 
manli  to  the  Marabout  of  Sidi  Messri.  .  .  .  We 
have  thus  abandoned  to  the  enemy  .  .  .  two  forts 
(Messri  and  Hamidie)  and  one  most  important 
position  (Henni),  also  a  large  stretch  of  land  very 
near  Tripoli  whence  the  enemy  can  fire  with  cannon 
on  the  city,  and  all  our  dead  buried  on  the  23rd." 

And  this  was  the  result  of  the  "  grandioso  suc- 
cesso  "  of  the  Italians,  of  the  "  vittoria  grande  per 
noi"  of  "  Za  plus  grande  et  la  plus  decisive  de  nos 
victoires,^'  as  Signor  Marinetti  calls  it. 

The  terror  of  the  night  following  this  "  victory  " 
is  difficult  to  describe.  "  Orrbile  notte,"  wails  one 
Italian  impressionist,  "  piena  di  tragedie  ignote, 
quella  in  cui  le  ombre  si  aggirano  sui  campi  della 
morte .'  "  ("  Horrible  night,  night  full  of  unknown 
tragedies,  night  in  which  the  shades  wander  around 
on  the  fields  of  death  !  ") 


THE  GAP  IN  THE  ITALIAN  LINE      243 

Horrible,  indeed,  for  this  was  not  only  the  night  of 
the  victory  (with  inverted  commas) :  it  was  also  the 
night  of  the  massacres  (without  inverted  commas), 
and  every  road,  pathway,  and  garden  in  the  oasis 
was  stre^vn  with  dead  bodies — the  bodies  of  innocent 
men,  women,  and  children. 

To  add  to  the  confusion  and  horror,  a  violent 
artillery  -  fire  began  at  half -past  ten.  The  corre- 
spondents in  town  thought  at  first  that  it  was  thunder. 
Then  they  felt  sure  that  the  Arabs  had  begun  a 
furious  night-attack  at  Sidi  Messri.  But  it  was  not 
thunder  and  it  was  not  a  night -attack.  It  was 
entirely  an  Italian  cannonade,  and  it  was  due  to  the 
appearance  of  small  parties  of  the  enemy,  who  were 
discovered  by  the  search-lights,  which  now  turned 
night  into  day  on  the  Desert  in  front  of  Sidi 
Messri. 

Those  parties  waved  white  flags  and  signified  that 
they  only  wished  to  take  away  their  dead  and 
wounded.  The  Italians  deeply  sympathised.  "  E 
probabile  pero,"  says  one  tearful  writer  who  describes 
the  scene,  "  che  alia  spicciolata,  con  tenace  amore  dei 
proprii  cari  perduti,  piu  d'  uno  di  essi  sia  ritornaio 
ancora  nella  nottc  al  pietoso  ufficio."  ("It  is  probable 
however,  that,  with  strong,  unwavering  love  for  their 
own  dear  lost  ones,  more  than  one  of  the  Arabs  had 
again  returned  in  the  night  to  render  the  last  sad 
offices  to  the  bodies  of  the  slain.") 

Bursting  with  sympathy,  the  Italians  allowed  the 
Arab  ambulances  to  approach — and  then  opened  on 
them  a  terrific  artillery  and  rifle  fire  which  (for  the 
invaders  had  noAv  got  the  range  accurately,  and  the 
splendid  search-lights  made  the  aiming  of  the  guns 
very  easy)  strewed  the  Desert  with  fresh  corpses. 
The  Arabs  fell  back  in  confusion,  but  they  evidently 


244        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR   A  DESERT 

thought  that  a  mistake  had  been  committed,  for 
they  did  not  return  the  fire,  and  after  a  while  they 
advanced  again.  Once  more  the  "  heirs  of  ancient 
Rome  "  allowed  the  ambulance-bearers  to  approach. 
Once  more  they  threw  the  search-lights  on  them, 
and  opened  a  heavy  fire  with  their  batteries  and 
their  rifles. 

Again  some  of  the  Arab  ambulance-men  fell ; 
while  the  survivors  fled  and  did  not  attempt  to 
return  that  night. 

Few  of  the  Italians  could  believe  that  mere 
Mohammedans  would  twice  run  such  a  risk  simply 
in  order  to  give  a  cup  of  cold  water  to  a  dying  friend 
whose  shrieks  had  reached  them  as  he  writhed  in  the 
agonies  of  thirst,  or  to  give  burial  with  Islamic  rites 
to  their  heroic  dead.  They  concluded,  therefore, 
that  un  grande  capo  arabo  (a  great  Arab  chief)  was 
among  the  slain  and  that  it  was  his  body  which  the 
enemy  wished  to  remove. 

As  for  the  Arab  wounded,  if  they  were  inside  the 
Italian  oasis,  their  cries  and  moans  were  soon  stopped 
by  a  bullet.  If  they  lay  out  in  the  Desert,  the  Italians 
neither  helped  them  themselves  nor  allowed  others 
to  help  them. 

They  let  them  die  without  a  cup  of  water 
under  the  piles  of  corpses  which  stifled  them  ;  and 
an  impressionist  writer — Tripoli  was  at  this  time  full 
of  Italian  impressionists  and  futurists,  for  this  was 
their  war,  they  had  brought  it  about — cleverly 
describes  how,  as  they  lay  powerless  on  their  backs, 
they  looked  up  vainly  with  glazing  eyes  al  cielo  im- 
passibile  del  Profeta  (at  the  impassible  sky  of  the 
Prophet). 

Carried  into  the  Italian  lines  by  the  night-wind 
from  the   Desert,   their   delirious   shrieks   of  agony 


THE  GAP  IN  THE  ITALIAN  LINE      245 

intensified  the  horror  of  a  scene  which  was  already 
horrible  enough.  Quite  proper,  of  course,  to  treat 
in  this  way  the  "  bad,  furious  enemy  "  who  had 
given  so  much  trouble  to  the  good  Italians  ! 

For  military  reasons  the  dead  bodies  of  friends 
and  foes  are  always  examined  very  carefully  in  war, 
and  in  this  case  an  examination  was  made  of  the 
Arabs  who  had  fallen  in  front  of  the  trenches,  as 
well  as  of  the  Italians,  Turks,  and  Arabs  who  had 
fallen  inside  the  oasis.  Opposite  the  villa  of  Gemal 
Bey  the  Arab  dead  were  piled  so  high  that  they 
formed  a  little  wall  from  behind  which  their  living 
comrades  had  fired.  It  was  underneath  this  pile,  by 
the  way,  that  the  famous  "  green  flag  of  the  Prophet  " 
had  been  "  captured."  Practically  all  the  dead  at 
this  point  were  Arabs.  Only  one  corpse  had  a 
Turkish  uniform  underneath  his  Arab  dress.  On 
the  person  of  each  native  was  a  little  "  soldier's 
manual,"  and  a  book  of  simple  instructions  regard- 
ing the  rifle.  This  showed  that  the  combatants  were 
irregular  Arab  soldiers  in  the  redif. 

The  attack  must  have  been  made  by  some  1500 
Arabs  from  Tarhuna,  Misurata,  Tagiura,  Agelat,  and 
Gharian.  The  Italians  pretend  to  believe  that  the 
enemy  were  4000  strong,  but,  even  if  he  were,  he 
dislodged  from  an  entrenched  position  a  force  five 
times  superior  to  himself.  In  modern  military  history 
such  a  feat  deserves  to  rank  with  Plevna  and 
Silistria. 

As  for  the  Italians  who  had  fallen  in  the  oasis,  it 
was  seen  that  many  of  them  had  been  killed  with 
knife-wounds  at  close  quarters.  There  had  evidently 
been  many  hand-to-hand  fights  in  the  palm-gardens  ; 
and,  wherever  it  was  a  case  of  man  against  man,  the 
Italian,   unsupported  this  time  by  his  battle-ships, 


246        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

his  artillery,  and  his  aeroplanes,  had  invariably  got 
the  worst  of  it. 

Surely,  when  they  read  the  report  of  this  battle, 
the  statesmen  of  Rome  must  have  regretted  their 
precipitancy  in  coming  to  death-grips  with  a  people 
like  this — the  people  whose  perpetual  and  turbulent 
freedom  is  referred  to  in  a  text  of  Scripture  and  in 
a  line  from  Horace — the  race  before  which  even  "  the 
legions  of  Augustus  melted  away  in  disease  and 
lassitude." 


PART    IV 
THE    MASSACRES 


CHAPTER    I 

THE  BURNING   OF  THE   BEDOUIN  VILLAGE 

I  HAVE  already  touched  on  the  "purging"  of  the  oasis, 
that  is,  the  kilhng  of  nearly  all  the  male  Arabs  above 
thirteen  or  fourteen  years  of  age  in  the  Italian  palm- 
gardens.  Those  Arabs  were  killed  or  exiled  because 
they  were  suspected  of  having  fired  on  the  Italian 
rear  or  of  being  capable  of  doing  so  in  the  future. 
As  I  have  already  explained  several  times,  the  mistake 
arose  from  the  fact  that  on  several  occasions  the 
Arabs  from  the  Desert  had  crept  inside  the  Italian 
lines  and  attacked  those  lines  in  the  rear.  They 
were  mistaken  at  first  for  "  friendly  "  Arabs  who 
had  "  treacherously "  risen,  but  they  were  not 
friendly  Arabs.  I  have  shown  by  extracts  taken 
from  the  reports  of  the  Italians  themselves  that  the 
men  who  fired  on  the  Italian  rear  were  Arab  auxili- 
aries who  had  come  from  a  distance  with  the  Turks. 
On  the  25th  and  26th,  however,  the  Italians  de- 
liberately killed  many  peaceful  oasis  Arabs  whom 
they  knew  to  be  innocent.  There  was  a  carnival 
of  killing,  a  regular  pogrom.  These  massacres  had 
been  going  on  pretty  steadily  for  days,  but  they 
reached  their  grand  climax  on  the  morning  of  October 
26th.  The  reasons  are  evident.  They  are  as  follows : 
All  sorts  of  rumours  had  been  circulating  in  the 
Italian  camp  the  night  before.  It  was  reported  that 
the  mysterious  head  of  the  Senussi  had  proclaimed  a 

249 


250        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

holy  war,  and  that  40,000  well-armed  Senussi  were 
on  their  march  to  Tripoli.  It  was  recognised  that  the 
affair  of  the  23rd  had  only  been  a  trifling  recon- 
naissance, but  that  next  time  Nesciat  Bey  would 
mean  business.  And  every  indication  pointed  to  the 
fact  that  "  next  time  "  meant  the  26th  or  27th.  It 
was  known  that  the  forces  which  had  attacked  the 
Bersaglieri  in  the  oasis  on  the  23rd,  and  which  were 
reported  by  the  Italians  to  have  been  almost  swept  off 
the  face  of  the  earth,  had  only  gone  back  about  half  a 
mile  and  were  preparing  another  attack.  The  aviators 
discovered  that  fresh  forces  were  marching  from  the 
interior  towards  Tagiura  at  the  eastern  extremity  of 
the  oasis,  and  the  junction  of  these  two  Arab  columns 
was  expected  to  take  place  on  the  26th.  From  the 
top  of  Messri  fort  other  small  columns  of  the  enemy 
were  seen  afar  off  in  the  Desert. 

All  these  circumstances  combined  to  create  terror 
and  desperation  in  the  Italian  ranks,  and  the  climax 
was  reached  when,  on  the  morning  of  the  26th,  the 
Turko-Arab  force  again  attacked  and  again  broke 
the  Italian  line. 

For  the  Italian  army  this  was  near  being  the  end 
of  all  things.  The  oasis  was  again  flooded  with 
Desert  Arabs,  and,  as  we  have  already  seen,  matters 
were  well-nigh  hopeless.  The  Italians  were  trying 
desperately,  but  vainly,  to  close  the  open  wound  in 
their  flank,  the  wound  through  which  the  enemy's 
steel  was  being  forced  deeper  and  deeper.  A  straw 
might  turn  the  scale.  A  handful  of  oasis  Arabs 
attacking  in  the  rear  might  bring  about  a  disaster  to 
which  Adowa  would  be  as  but  a  street  accident,  and 
which  the  House  of  Savoy  could  hardly  hope  to  survive. 

To  prevent  this  rear  attack,  the  Italians  killed  off 
most   of   the   innocent   oasis    Arabs    in   their   rear. 


BURNING  THE  BEDOUIN  VILLAGE     251 

General  Caneva's  proclamations  did  not,  it  is  true, 
order  a  general  massacre,  but  those  proclamations 
were  interpreted  in  such  a  way  that  a  general  mas- 
sacre took  place. 

"  The  orders  were  issued,  therefore,"  says  a  well- 
informed  English  eye-witness,  writing  in  "  Black- 
wood's Magazine  "  for  December,  1911,  that  the  oasis 
should  be  immediately  cleared,  and  that  all  male 
Arabs  found  with  arms  in  their  hands,  or  who  were 
shown,  from  circumstantial  or  other  evidence,  to 
have  been  implicated  in  the  rising,  should  be  sum- 
marily executed.  The  orders  were  sufficiently  lax 
and  general  to  permit  of  a  sharp  and  salutary  lesson, 
as  the  Arabs  had  already  been  warned  by  proclama- 
tion that  the  possession  of  a  rifle  would  be  considered 
a  capital  offence.  Caneva  and  his  staff,  however, 
had  not  calculated  upon  what  this  order  meant  to 
troops  that  had  just  seen  their  mutilated  dead,  who 
believed  that  they  were  about  to  be  attacked 
treacherously  in  the  rear,  and  who  had  ever  over 
them  the  shadow  of  Adowa.  The  carrying  out  of 
the  duty  necessitated  the  breaking  up  of  the  troops 
into  small  detachments,  which  loosed  the  control 
upon  the  inflamed  passions  of  the  soldiery.  Nor  did 
the  Staff  know  how  or  when  to  place  a  period  upon 
the  license  they  thus  gave  the  troops.  The  result 
was  a  retribution  upon  the  Arabs,  which  will  live  in 
the  memory  of  Tripolitania  for  generations,  and 
which  will  react  for  many  a  year  upon  the  perpe- 
trators themselves.  It  is  not  desirable  here  to  go 
into  the  details  of  the  days  of  bloodshed  that  swept 
through  the  Italian  portion  of  the  oasis.  War  is 
horrid  and  merciless,  and  its  horror  and  mercilessness 
is  intensified  when  killing  is  done  by  men  actuated 
by  terror." 


252        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR   A   DESERT 

"  The  Times  "  correspondent  said  : 

"  The  severity  with  which  the  Italian  army  has 
exacted  retribution  upon  the  suburban  Arabs  who 
rose  last  Monday  might  justly  be  described  as  indis- 
criminate slaughter.  The  two  quarters  from  which 
the  Arabs  assailed  the  Bersaglieri  in  the  rear  have 
been  turned  into  human  abattoirs.  It  has  been  a 
miserable  business.  .  .  .  The  Italians  having  set 
themselves  to  cow  the  Arabs,  the  flood-gates  of  blood- 
lust  were  opened,  and  in  many  instances  the  men 
got  beyond  control  and  the  innocent  suffered  with  the 
guilty.  The  tale  of  retribution  has  been  shockingly 
heavy.  .  .  .  The  memory  of  this  awful  retribution 
will  take  long  to  live  down.  Even  making  allowance 
for  the  exigencies  of  the  military  situation,  there  is 
every  possibility  that  the  hideous  severity  of  the 
retribution  will  give  rise  to  a  war  of  sanguinary  and 
pitiless  reprisals  upon  unfortunates  who  fall  by  the 
way.  War  is  merciless.  I  have  witnessed  one  of  its 
most  merciless  phases.  One  hardly  knows  to  what 
limits  the  elasticity  of  the  phrase  '  military 
exigencies '  will  be  stretched  in  the  twentieth 
century." 

"  For  three  days,"  said  the  "  Daily  Chronicle  " 
correspondent,  "  Italian  troops  shot  down  all  whom 
they  met  without  trial.  Innocent  and  guilty  were 
wiped  out,  and  many  women  and  children  perished 
in  the  confusion.  Including  those  killed  in  the 
fighting,  4000  Arabs  perished  between  Friday  and 
Monday  last  week.  .  .  .  Orders  were  given  by  the 
authorities  to  exterminate  all  Arabs  found  in  the 
oasis,  and  to  make  a  systematic  house-to-house 
search  for  arms  and  ammunition.  For  three  days 
this  dread  task  continued.  Parties  of  soldiers  pene- 
trated throughout  every  portion  of  the  oasis,  shooting 


i     4 


BURNING  THE  BEDOUIN  VILLAGE     253 

indiscriminately  all  whom  they  met,  without  trial, 
without  appeal." 

"  Who  could  ever  have  imagined  what  we  have  had 
to  look  on  at  ?  "  said  M.  Cossira,  the  special  corre- 
spondent of  the  Paris  "Excelsior."  "The  rush  to 
assassinate — the  hecatombs  of  old  men,  women  and 
children,  the  executions  by  heaps — the  piles  of 
mangled  flesh  smoking  under  the  wool  of  the  bur- 
nouses, like  a  human  incense  burnt  before  the  ruined 
altar  of  a  dearly  bought  victory  ! 

"  Whilst  going  away  from  the  cavalry  post  I  came 
upon  a  hundred  corpses  thrown  against  a  wall, 
where  they  had  been  shot  down,  in  horrible  attitudes, 
all  mixed  up  together.  I  hurried  away  to  escape  the 
sight,  and  passed  an  Arab  village.  A  native  family 
was  grouped  there  round  a  burnt-out  fire.  They  had 
evidently  been  about  to  eat,  but  now  they  were  all 
dead.  One  little  girl  had  thrust  her  head  into  a  box 
so  as  not  to  see  anything  ;  another  had  fallen  back 
on  to  a  cactus  bush." 

Mr.  Ellis  Ashmead  -  Bartlett,  who  represented 
Renter,  wired  as  follows  : 

"On  October  24th,  25th,  26th,  and  27th,  the 
troops  proceeded  to  make  a  clean  sweep  of  all  that 
portion  of  the  oasis  of  which  they  held  possession. 
There  is  no  certain  proof  that  any  Arabs  in  the 
west  end  of  it  ever  took  part  in  the  rising  ;  but, 
even  admitting  that  there  were,  there  were  vast 
numbers  of  men,  women,  and  boys  who  were  perfectly 
innocent,  and  of  these  nearly  all  the  men,  and  even 
the  boys  above  a  certain  age,  were  shot,  while  un- 
doubtedly many  women  perished  in  the  confusion, 
and  in  one  instance  I  know  soldiers  without  an 
officer  were  only  restrained  from  shooting  at  a  woman 
by  the  intervention  of  a  foreigner. 


254        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

"  But  even  supposing  these  wholesale  executions 
were  justified  as  condign  punishment  and  as  a 
salutary  lesson  to  evil-doers,  the  manner  in  which 
they  were  carried  out  cannot  be  too  strongly  con- 
demned, and  it  is  only  fair  to  say  that  many  Italian 
officers,  looking  at  the  affair  calmly  after  its  occur- 
rence, are  of  the  same  opinion. 

"  For  four  days  parties  of  soldiers  scoured  every 
portion  of  the  oasis,  shooting  indiscriminately  every 
Arab  they  met.  .  .  .  The  blood  of  the  men  was  up, 
and  naturally  so  ;  they  had  seen  their  comrades 
shot  from  behind,  and  even,  it  is  reported,  mutilated  ; 
but  of  the  latter  fact  I  could  not  ascertain  the  exact 
truth  ;  and  with  their  excitable  temperament  and 
highly  developed  imagination  they  suspected  every 
living  soul  to  be  guilty  ;  and  decided  to  punish  all 
accordingly.  Thus  for  four  days  gangs  of  soldiers, 
often  without  officers,  shot  every  one." 

In  addition  to  this,  Mr.  Ashmead-Bartlett  wired 
from  Malta  a  description  of  a  ride  he  had  taken  in 
company  with  Mr.  Grant  of  the  "  Daily  Mirror  "  and 
Mr.  Davis  of  the  "  Morning  Post."  This  statement 
was  afterwards  signed  in  the  British  Consulate  by  all 
three  gentlemen,  Mr.  Grant  and  Mr.  Davis  making, 
however,  reservations  with  regard  to  cases  which 
they  had  not  seen  themselves, 

"  On  leaving  the  town,"  says  Mr.  Ashmead- 
Bartlett,  "  the  first  object  which  met  our  eyes  was  a 
group  of  from  fifty  to  seventy  men  and  boys  who 
had  been  caught  in  the  town  on  the  previous  day,  or 
on  October  25th,  and  shot  without  trial  of  any  sort. 
The  majority  of  them  were  caught  without  arms,  and 
were  executed  under  a  general  order  issued  by  the 
Governor,  General  Carlo  Caneva,  to  exterminate  all 
Arabs  found  in  Tripoli  or  in  the  oasis.     They  had 


BURNING  THE  BEDOUIN  VILLAGE     255 

been  led  to  this  spot  with  their  hands  tied  behind 
their  backs  and  shot  down  indiscriminately.  This 
mass  of  corpses  lying  in  all  attitudes  in  a  solid  mass 
piled  on  one  another  could  not  have  covered  a  space 
greater  than  fifteen  yards  wide  to  five  deep.  .  .  . 

"  The  next  object  which  struck  our  eyes  was  the 
body  of  a  very  old  man  lying  in  the  centre  of  the 
road.  From  the  attitude  in  which  he  lay  he  had 
evidently  been  shot  while  running  or  walking  up  the 
road.  Every  few  yards  we  came  across  fresh  corpses 
lying  in  every  conceivable  attitude  just  where  they 
had  been  shot  down,  but  not  all  had  been  killed  in 
this  manner,  for  some  bore  evident  traces  of  having 
been  bayoneted  or  clubbed  to  death  with  the  butt- 
ends  of  rifles.  Many  had  evidently  only  been  wounded 
and  had  crawled  to  the  side  of  the  road,  there  to 
die. 

"  The  road  from  the  town  to  the  desert,  which  had 
formerly  been  alive  with  Arabs — men,  women,  and 
children — ^was  now  completely  deserted  except  for 
the  dead.  The  houses  on  either  side  had  been  broken 
into  and  their  occupants  murdered  therein  or  taken 
outside  and  shot.  In  the  side  tracks  running  off 
from  the  main  road  were  many  bodies,  some  lying 
alone,  others  in  small  groups,  and  in  one  spot  lay  two 
Jews  who  had  shared  the  fate  of  almost  all  the  in- 
habitants of  the  outlying  gardens  and  houses. 

"  During  the  whole  progress  over  a  distance  of  two 
miles  we  never  saw  a  single  living  Arab — man, 
woman,  or  child.  Lying  just  outside  the  outpost 
line,  was  another  group  of  about  fifty  men  and  boys, 
who  had  evidently  been  taken  out  there  on  the 
previous  day  and  shot  en  masse.  Several  of  them 
had  been  bayoneted  or  slashed  with  swords,  and  one 
man  had  his  head  completely  smashed    in — a  wound 


256        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

which  could  only  have  been  inflicted  by  the  butt-end 
of  a  rifle. 

"  Then  we  rode  on  out  to  the  lines  of  the  Bersaglieri, 
who  were  holding  a  position  known  as  a  fort,  but 
we  did  not  stay  there  long,  because  the  troops  had 
received  orders  to  evacuate  their  position  and  to  take 
up  another  closer  to  the  town.  The  fort  was  thus 
abandoned  and  blown  up.  At  the  same  time  another 
position,  a  large  white  building  known,  I  think,  as 
the  Agricultural  College,  was  abandoned  by  the 
Italians.  It  had  been  held  ever  since  the  occupation 
of  Tripoli,  and  there  were  several  Arabs  who  stayed 
there  with  the  troops,  fetching  them  water  or  grazing 
goats  in  the  Desert  just  beyond,  returning  to  the  lines 
at  nightfall.  I  have  also  frequently  seen  a  number 
of  children  round  this  building. 

"  Now,  these  men  could  not  have  been  guilty  of  an 
attack  on  the  Italians,  because  they  had  been  living 
under  their  observation  ever  since  the  occupation, 
and  had  they  been  guilty  they  should  have  been 
shot  on  the  23rd,  the  day  of  the  outbreak  in  the 
town,  and  should  certainly  not  have  been  allowed 
to  roam  in  and  out  perfectly  free  for  four  days. 
When  the  troops  evacuated  the  position  one  of 
these  Arabs  followed  them,  evidently  intending  to  ac- 
company them  into  the  town  for  safety.  Suddenly, 
when  he  was  only  about  thirty  yards  away,  about 
a  dozen  soldiers  turned  around  and  commenced  to 
take  pot-shots  at  him.  He  attempted  to  run  for 
shelter  behind  one  of  the  evacuated  entrenchments, 
but  he  was  evidently  wounded,  for  he  could  only 
walk.  Then  one  of  the  soldiers  had  another  shot, 
and  he  fell.  They  closed  in  on  him,  but  he  was 
evidently  dead,  for  there  was  no  further  firing. 
This  I  will  call  for  reference  '  Case  No.  1.' 


BURNING  THE  BEDOUIN  VILLAGE    257 

"  Case  No.  2  was  that  of  another  very  old  Arab. 
He  had  been  sitting  most  of  the  afternoon  up  against 
the  wall  of  the  college  and  saw  what  passed.  He 
made  no  effort  to  escape,  and  the  soldiers  went  back 
and  shot  him  in  like  manner  from  a  considerable 
distance  as  he  sat  against  the  wall  with  his  head 
bowed  as  if  too  weary  of  life  or  too  apathetic  to 
survive  the  massacre  of  his  friends  and  relatives. 
Then  we  rode  past  the  mass  of  bodies  lying  just  in 
front  of  the  trenches.  A  party  was  at  work  digging 
a  trench  in  which  to  bury  them.  Soldiers  and  sailors 
and  some  Italian  journalists  were  standing  around. 
There  was  talking  and  laughing,  and  photographs 
were  being  taken.  Then  we  once  more  took  the 
same  road  past  the  Cavalry  Barracks  leading  to  the 
town. 

"  Case  No.  3.  Suddenly  we  heard  a  shot  and  saw 
a  figure  emerge  from  a  house  and  apparently  fall 
in  the  middle  of  the  road  about  one  hundred  yards 
ahead  of  us.  Mr.  Grant  said  to  me  :  '  Look,  I  believe 
there  is  a  soldier  or  an  Arab  lying  down  to  take  a 
shot  at  us.'  I  replied  :  '  No,  I  don't  think  so  ;  I 
don't  know  what  it  is,  but  I  certainly  saw  it  move.* 
Then  we  rode  up,  and  we  saw  an  Arab  cloak  lying 
in  the  road  out  of  which  had  crawled  a  young  Arab 
to  a  cottage  to  the  right  of  the  road.  He  was  lying 
by  the  door,  and  was  bleeding  profusely  and  near 
death,  so  it  seemed  to  me.  Hearing  our  approach, 
he  had  evidently  tried  to  crawl  for  shelter. 

"  Just  then  an  Arab  woman,  doubtless  his  wife, 
came  running  from  the  cottage  from  which  he  had 
first  emerged  from  the  left  of  the  road  with  a  bowl 
in  her  hand,  but  when  she  saw  us  coming  she  ran  in 
again.  We  could  do  nothing,  so  we  passed  on  wonder- 
ing who  had  shot  the  man,  as  we  had  seen  no  soldiers, 
s 


258        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

but,  rounding  a  bend,  we  came  upon  a  detachment 
under  an  officer.  It  was  they  who  had  taken  him 
from  his  house  and  shot  him  before  the  eyes  of  his 
wife  and  then  left  him  to  die  by  the  roadside. 

"  Cases  4,  5  and  6.  Just  as  we  reached  this  de- 
tachment, they  met  three  perfectly  harmless-looking 
Arabs  walking  up  the  road  and  carrying  no  weapons. 
They  were  clad  in  clean  white  robes,  and  evidently 
men  of  high  class.  It  was  obvious  at  a  glance  that 
they  were  not  men  of  the  fighting  class,  but  peaceful 
and  well-to-do  owners  of  property  in  the  oasis,  and 
the  last  men  to  risk  their  lives  and  their  property 
in  a  futile  insurrection.  One  of  them  looked  about 
fifty  years  of  age  and  another  about  thirty,  and  the 
third  was  a  youth  in  his  'teens,  I  should  judge. 
But  appearances  availed  them  naught.  They  were 
seized  by  order  of  the  officer,  and  without  a  word  of 
interrogation  or  explanation,  for  the  Italians  had 
no  interpreter  with  them,  unless  one  of  their  own 
number  could  speak  Arabic,  an  extremely  unlikely 
contingency,  they  were  taken  inside  a  cottage  and 
shot  against  the  wall,  not  by  a  regular  volley,  but  by 
a  series  of  isolated  shots. 

"  These  are  the  six  instances  of  men  being  shot 
before  my  eyes  on  the  fourth  day  after  the  so-called 
insurrection. 

"  Although  there  was  no  fighting  on  the  afternoon 
of  October  27th,  there  was  continual  firing  in  all 
parts  of  the  oasis.  This  was  entirely  produced  by 
small  bodies  of  soldiers,  in  many  instances  without 
officers,  roaming  throughout  and  indiscriminately 
massacring  all  whom  they  met.  We  must  have 
passed  the  bodies  of  over  one  hundred  persons  on 
this  one  high  road,  and  as  similar  scenes  were  enacted 
through  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  oasis  some 


f^ 


BURNING  THE  BEDOUIN  VILLAGE     259 

estimate  of  the  numbers  of  innocent  men,  women, 
and  children  who  were  butchered,  doubtless  with 
many  who  were  guilty  of  attacking  the  Italian 
troops  in  the  rear,  may  be  appreciated." 

"  Steps  have  been,  and  are  being  taken,"  writes 
Mr.  Bennet  Burleigh,  the  war-correspondent  of  the 
"  Daily  Telegraph "  (Nov.  7th),  "  to  ensure  us 
greater  tranquillity  in  Tripoli.  The  oasis  of  palms 
is  being  ruthlessly  cleared  of  its  population  of  villagers, 
small  farmers  and  peasants.  Very  many  have  been 
killed  and  their  corpses  bestrew  the  fields  and  roads. 
The  scent  of  war's  scythe  poisons  the  air.  An  aged 
Arab  declares  that  4000  have  been  slain,  and  with 
them  at  least  400  women  and  many  children.  Say 
half  that  number,  and  still  you  have  a  fearful,  sangui- 
nary monument  of  the  horrors  of  war  and  conquest, 
if  not  of  something  worse,  and  of  a  massacre  of  the 
strong,  the  weak,  of  aged  greybeards,  and  the  young. 
Many  have  unquestionably  been  wantonly  murdered. 
That  is  not  always  preventable  in  war,  but  in  the 
twentieth  century,  and  in  civilised  warfare,  it  is 
quite  without  the  pale  to  shoot  men  and  lads  whole- 
sale on  sight  without  trial  and  because  of  their  skin 
and  dress. 

"  I  have  seen  a  crippled  beggar — a  man  whose 
limbs  were  so  deformed  that  he  had  to  move  by 
pushing  along  the  ground  in  a  sitting  position — 
deliberately  shot  at  near  the  Austrian  Consulate. 
Dozens  of  other  natives  I  have  seen  herded  and 
corralled  and  others  fired  upon  in  broad  daylight. 
But  there  are  half  a  dozen  colleagues,  English,  French, 
and  German — who  assert  that  they  have  seen  Arabs 
fusilladed  in  groups,  and  have  even  '  snap-shotted  ' 
instances  where  soldiers  and  officers  indiscrimin- 
ately fired  upon  these  unfortunate  natives.     At  any 


260        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

hour  of  the  day  you  may  see  gangs  of  wretched 
natives  being  marched  through  the  streets  as  prisoners. 
These  are  subsequently  dealt  with  by  the  carabinieri, 
imprisoned — or  otherwise.  The  daily  captures  effected 
in  town  and  suburbs  of  men,  women,  and  children 
run  into  hundreds,  nay  thousands." 

"  Owing  to  the  helplessness  of  the  officers,"  wired 
the  Tripoli  correspondent  of  the  "  Frankfurter 
Zeitung,"  "  a  wild  man-hunt  began.  The  troops  were 
even  allowed  to  fire  on  women  and  children.  Thus 
far,  at  least,  3000  natives  have  been  executed  or 
shot  down.  ...  In  the  execution  of  these  measures 
I  witnessed  myself  unheard-of  atrocities." 

"  The  Arabs  were  shot  a  little  everywhere," 
remarks  an  Italian  correspondent  lightly.  "At 
Bumeliana  there  was  an  enormous  pit,  into  which 
one  descended  by  a  narrow  path,  a  pit  dug  in  the 
hot,  morbid  earth,  a  gash  in  the  ground  which  had 
the  sinister  aspect  of  a  gigantic  wound.  The  Arabs 
were  thrown  (alive)  into  this  pit  from  above.  Then 
a  soldier  descended,  and  one  heard  a  series  of  dull 
explosions  as  if  there  was  firing  going  on  in  the 
bowels  of  the  earth.    The  soldier  ascended — alone." 

Whole  sections  of  the  suburbs  were  surrounded 
by  soldiers  who  hunted  through  the  huts,  houses,  and 
date-gardens  exactly  like  sportsmen  hunting  big 
game.  Not  only  did  they  shoot  at  every  Arab  whom 
they  met.  Blinded  by  perspiration  and  panic,  they 
also  fired  at  one  another  in  mistake,  and  these  ac- 
cidents gave  rise  to  fresh  massacres. 

In  many  instances  the  soldiers  were  received  with 
rifle  and  revolver  bullets  on  the  thresholds  of  native 
houses,  which  they  had  come  to  search.  The  inhabit- 
ants may  have  been  leagued  with  the  Turks,  but  it 
is   quite  possible  that  some  of  them  were  innocent 


BURNING  THE  BEDOUIN  VILLAGE     261 

people  driven  to  desperation  by  witnessing  the  fate 
which  had  overtaken  their  friends  and  neighbours. 
Under  the  Turkish  regime  they  had  kept  arms  in 
their  houses  for  self-protection.  The  new  rulers  of 
Tripoli  city  had  not  made  known  to  them  the 
fact  that  they  wanted  those  arms  surrendered  and 
that  to  retain  them  meant  sudden  death.  If  the 
proclamation  of  the  23rd  requiring  all  arms  to  be 
surrendered  within  twenty-four  hours  had  reached 
them  at  all,  it  had  reached  them  at  a  time  when  the 
oasis  was  overrun  by  crazy  soldiers  who  would  most 
certainly  shoot  any  Arab  caught  with  arms  in  his 
hands,  whether  he  was  on  his  way  to  surrender  those 
arms  or  not. 

Under  these  circumstances  even  a  worm  would 
turn,  and  the  Arab  is  not  exactly  a  worm.  Seeing  no 
other  way  out  of  the  difficulty  he  remained  at  home 
and  prepared  a  hot  reception  for  the  emissaries  of 
King  Victor  Emmanuel.  When  the  first  soldier 
crossed  the  threshold  there  was  a  loud  report  from 
the  obscurity  of  the  cabin,  and  that  soldier  fell. 
The  others  raked  the  house  with  bullets  and  then 
set  it  on  fire.  The  Arab  died  game.  He  had  not 
to  submit  to  the  indignity  of  being  dragged  outside, 
kicked,  buffeted  in  the  face,  and  then  placed  against 
a  wall  and  killed.  Since  he  had  to  die  in  any  case, 
well,  better  let  an  Infidel  or  two  go  before  him.  No- 
body can  blame  the  Arabs  for  acting  like  this  towards 
opponents  who  were  practically  insane.  Under 
similar  circumstances  Englishmen  would  have  done 
the  same  thing,  and  Rudyard  Kipling  would  have 
written  ballads  in  honour  of  them. 

Behind  the  Esparto  Grass  Factory  of  the  Banco  di 
Roma,  was  a  Bedouin  village  containing  several  hun- 
dred inhabitants.    On  the  morning  of  October  26th, 


262        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

the  place  was  burned  to  the  ground  and  most  of 
the  inhabitants  were  butchered.  Among  the  blazing 
embers  I  found  the  corpse  of  an  old  grey-haired 
woman  with  a  bullet -wound  in  the  left  shoulder.  A 
few  feet  away  I  found  a  sick  boy  and  two  sick  and 
bed-ridden  old  women  lying  on  the  ground  near  the 
dead  bodies  of  several  women  and  men.  These  three 
sick  persons  had  not  been  protected  from  the  heat 
of  the  fire  ;  and  the  boy,  who  seemed  to  be  about 
thirteen  or  fourteen  years  old,  was  left  lying  on  the 
ground,  half-naked  and  exposed  for  a  whole  day 
without  food  or  drink  to  the  intolerable  blaze  of  the 
sun.  He  moaned  piteously  as  he  lay  in  the  ashes 
and  dust,  and  pressed  his  hands  against  his  temples. 
Twenty  yards  off  was  a  temporary  Red  Cross  hospital 
under  canvas,  and  at  the  door  of  it  stood  two  very 
stylishly  dressed  military  doctors  with  nothing  in 
the  world  to  do  at  that  moment  save  to  twirl  the 
ends  of  their  well-waxed  moustaches.  Behind  them 
were  fully  twenty  Red  Cross  soldiers,  also  with  abso- 
lutely nothing  to  do.  I  asked  the  officers  if  they  could 
not  have  those  sick  people  carried  inside  the  hospital 
or  given  at  least  the  drink  of  water  for  which  they 
were  most  piteously  begging.  The  doctors  promised 
to  attend  at  once  to  the  matter.  They  said,  "Yes, 
yes,  we  are  not  barbarians.  We  shall  at  once  send  for 
stretchers  and  have  all  those  people  brought  into  the 
hospital."  And  as  they  apparently  gave  directions  to 
that  effect,  I  felt  sure  that  the  sick  people  would 
be  attended  to,  and  went  out  into  the  oasis.  But 
when  I  chanced  to  pass  that  way  some  hours  later  I 
found  that  the  officers  had  broken  their  promises  and 
that  the  sick  Arabs  were  still  in  the  same  condition. 
I  determined,  therefore,  to  appeal  to  a  venerable 
Franciscan  who  was  not  only  a  high  official  of  the 


Ill    IvX  I     llKlMii   IN    E.\X  \M1'MKXT. 

Xakfd  woman  left  to  die.     She  was  dead  tlie  next  day. 


Kl-.M.M.Ns  111    r,i  i,:\i    .\I^\|■,  Vlf.I..V(.K. 
To  Jaci-  p.  262.  I'lwlos.  by  Author. 


BURNING  THE  BEDOUIN  VILLAGE     263 

Red  Cross  organisation,  but  also  an  ecclesiastic  of 
very  elevated  rank.  I  refer  to  the  Very  Rev.  Father 
Giuseppe  Bevilacqua,  ex-Prefect  Apostolic,  who  had 
just  returned  from  Italy  in  order  to  lend  his  powerful 
assistance  to  the  Red  Cross.  I  had  read  in  the  local, 
ultra -jingoistic,  ultra-"  patriotic  "  Italian  organ  that 
Father  Bevilacqua  had  obeyed  the  summons  because 
of  his  "  extraordinary  self-abnegation  "  which  made 
him  think  himself  "  ben  felice  di  poter  ancora  rendersi 
utile  alia  Patria." 

I  felt  convinced  that  if  I  drew  Father  Bevilacqua' s 
attention  to  the  case  of  this  Arab  boy  he  would  at 
once  attend  to  it.  I  found  the  Reverend  Father 
walking  along  the  sea-front  in  company  with  several 
large,  well-groomed  countrymen  of  his. 

The  bare  feet,  the  rope  cincture,  the  rough  dress, 
the  Red  Cross  badge,  all  indicated  devotion  to  the 
outcast  and  the  poor.  Surely  he  would  seize  with 
avidity  this  opportunity  of  showing  the  benighted 
Arab  the  superiority  of  Christian  morality. 

Father  Bevilacqua  promised  in  French  that  he 
would  represent  the  boy's  case  to  the  medical  authori- 
ties. The  large  well-groomed  public  men  who  were 
with  him  could  not  conceal  looks  of  surprise  and 
disapprobation  as  they  heard  my  request ;  so  that 
I  hastened  to  explain  that  I  would  bear  all  the  ex- 
penses of  the  boy's  treatment. 

After  an  hour  had  passed  I  returned  to  the  place 
where  the  lad  lay  and  found  to  my  surprise  that 
Father  Bevilacqua  had  not  kept  his  promise.  The 
boy  was  still  in  the  same  place.  His  eyes,  nostrils, 
and  mouth  were  black  with  flies  which  had  settled 
on  him  as  if  he  were  already  dead.  The  two  old 
women  were  in  the  same  condition. 

I  next  approached  another  Franciscan,  a  young 


264        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

Frenchman.  He  was  pious  and  sympathetic,  but 
very  weak  and  simple.  On  our  way  to  see  the  boy 
we  met  Father  Bevilacqua,  who  avoided  my  eye,  but 
hastily  counselled  my  companion  not  to  bother  him- 
self about  the  dying  Arab  lad.  "  Let  him  die  "  was 
his  parting  observation.  I  did  not  hear  that  remark, 
but,  with  a  horror-stricken  face,  the  French  Francis- 
can translated  it  for  me. 

The  young  French  monk  came  with  me  and  we 
both  tried  every  means  to  get  the  unfortunate  Arabs 
attended  to.  It  was  all  in  vain.  The  fury  of  the 
Italians  against  the  Arabs  made  the  admission  of  an 
Arab  to  any  hospital  a  matter  of  utter  impossibility. 
There  is  here  an  Italian  hospital  looked  after  by 
French  nuns.  My  friend  the  French  Franciscan 
assured  me,  however,  that  it  would  be  utterly  im- 
possible to  get  the  boy  into  this  or  any  other  hospital. 
My  renewed  offer  to  pay  all  the  expenses  did  not 
improve  matters.  The  thing  could  not  be  done. 
The  fury  of  the  Italians  against  the  Arabs  was  too 
great. 

Within  some  yards  of  where  I  stood,  a  private 
soldier  was  savagely  kicking  a  corpse.  I  offered  him 
money  if  he  would  attend  to  the  dying  Arab,  but  he 
refused.  I  had  almost  persuaded  an  Italian  labourer 
to  undertake  the  work  when,  on  examining  the  lad, 
he  suddenly  declared  that  it  was  a  case  of  cholera, 
and  informed  me  that  he  would  have  nothing  to  do 
with  it. 

An  interpreter  who  accompanied  the  Franciscan 
questioned  the  sick  boy  in  Arabic,  The  boy  said 
that  he  was  suffering  from  hunger  and  thirst.  He 
attempted  to  rise  to  his  feet,  but  failed.  That  he  was 
not  shamming  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  when  I 
visited  the  spot  next  morning  I  found  him  dead. 


ff  «  ■'■  ■'" 


mmm^jBmmi 


^■^' 


I 


Dying  Arai;.     Si:ntinki.s  on  clakd. 


Slil.DIKNS    JKEKING    AT    DYIXC;    NAKKI)    ARAI!    WOMAN,    WHOM     I 
I'OLNU    UKAIJ    AT    THE    SAME    Sln)T    ON    THE    I-OLLOWTNCt    DAY. 


To  Jim:  p.  .'65. 


Photos,  bv  Aiilhoi. 


BURNING  THE  BEDOUIN  VILLAGE     265 

His  mouth  and  his  finger-nails  were  full  of  earth.  In 
his  death-agony  he  had  evidently  torn  the  ground 
with  his  teeth  and  nails.  He  died  without  any  one 
near  him  to  offer  him  a  cup  of  water,  for  all  his  tribe 
— men,  women,  and  children — had  been  exterminated. 
The  two  old  women  who  lay  at  some  distance  from 
him  were  also  dead. 

At  the  entrance  to  the  enclosure  in  which  the  boy 
and  the  old  women  lay,  a  number  of  half-crazy 
soldiers  had  been  on  guard  all  night.  In  the  day-time 
it  would  have  been  impossible  for  any  Arab  to  ap- 
proach the  place.  They  would  have  been  shot  down 
at  once.  At  night  it  would  have  been  equally 
dangerous  for  a  European  civilian  to  approach. 
Even  a  perfect  knowledge  of  the  Italian  language 
was  not  always  a  safeguard.  In  broad  daylight  next 
morning  Lorenzo  Falcon,  a  peaceful  Maltese  fisher- 
man and  a  British  subject,  had  been  shot  dead  by  a 
sentinel  on  the  sea-front,  the  most  fashionable  and 
frequented  street  in  the  city.  The  British  Foreign 
Office  accepted  the  Italian  explanation  that  the  man 
had  been  fired  on  only  after  he  refused  to  stop  or 
to  give  the  password. 

This  Arab  child  had  died  a  lonelier  and  more 
abandoned  death  than  even  Christ  had  died  on  the 
Cross,  for  the  Italian  soldiers  of  that  day  had  allowed 
at  least  His  mother  and  His  favourite  disciple  to 
approach.  This  Bedouin  lad  died  naked  and  aban- 
doned on  the  ground.^ 

^  It  was  when  von  Gottberg  and  I  saw  these  dead  bodies  that  we 
decided  to  send  back  our  papers  to  General  Caneva  and  to  leave  an 
army  in  which  such  things  were  done.  This  brave  German  gentleman 
was  moved  almost  to  tears,  and  I  remember  him  saying  as  we  stood 
over  the  corpse  of  the  Arab  :  "  This  is  what  a  quarrel  between 
England  and  Germany  will  mean — the  weakening  of  both,  and  con- 
sequently a  free  hand  to  the  peoples  who  do  things  like  this." 

I  must  say  that  during  my  stay  in  Tripoli  I  felt  much  attracted  by 
the  Germans  and  Austrians,  owing  to  the  honest  and  manly  indignation 


266        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

Next  day  I  saw  Father  Bevilacqua  on  the 
steps  of  the  Franciscan  Church  receiving  consuls, 
consuls'  wives,  powerful  financiers,  and  military 
magnates  who  had  come  to  attend  the  Solemn 
Requiem  Mass  for  the  Italian  dead. 

Before  concluding  my  account  of  the  sick  Arabs 

which  the  Itahan  outrages  roused  in  them.  Those  outrages  seemed 
to  affect  the  French  and  the  other  European  residents  much  less, 
indeed  at  one  of  the  worst  spots  in  the  oasis  I  met  on  this  day  a 
young  French  lady  from  Tunis  calmly  photographing  the  corpses  with 
which  the  ground  was  strewn,  and  not  seeming  to  be  in  the  least  put 
out.  I  suspect  that  on  the  question  of  killing  there  was  a  funda- 
mental difference  of  view  between  the  Germans  and  myself  on  the 
one  hand  and  the  Southern  Italians,  Southern  French  and  Tunisian 
French  on  the  other.  The  terrible  account  of  the  massacres  which 
Renter  sent  from  Malta  on  November  6th  shocked  all  London,  but 
an  Italian  paper  which  had  it  retransmitted  expressed  its  surprise 
that  these  few  killings  should  have  aroused  such  a  protest.  The  same 
observation  was  made  by  an  Italian  paper  when  von  Gottberg 
published  in  the  "  Lokal-Anzeiger  "  an  even  more  shocking  story. 
In  conversation  with  Italians  I  find  that  they  sometimes  admit  all 
the  cases  I  give,  but  object  to  my  using  the  word  "  massacre."  In 
fact  that  is  all  they  object  to.  I  must  say  that  they  also  maintain 
that  the  women  and  young  boys  who  were  shot  had  been  found 
firing  on  the  Italians. 

Von  Gottberg  gives  in  the  "Lokal-Anzeiger"  the  following  account 
of  how  he  and  I  decided  to  return  our  passes  to  G  oneral  Caneva,  It 
was,  he  says,  after  we  had  seen  the  Arab  boy's  corpse. 

"  McCullagh  war  nachgekommen,  er  begegnete  mir  mit  einer  Hand 
erhoben  wie  zum  Schwur  :  '  Dafiir  soUen  in  London  Versamralungen 
einberufen  und  Protestreden  im  Farlament  gehalten  werden  ! ' 

"  '  Recht  so  !  Aber  zunachst  werfen  wir  dem  General  unsere  Papiere 
vor  die  Fiisze  ! ' 

"  '  At  once  ;  if  you  please  ! ' 

"  Und  ich  glaube,  dasz  jedermann  unsere  Entriistung  teilen  wird. " 

I  shall  translate  part  of  this,  briefly,  as  follows  :  "  McCullagh  had 
overtaken  me.  He  met  me  with  one  hand  uphfted  as  if  swearing  an 
oath.  'For  this  day's  work,'  said  he,  'there  shall  be  meetings  in 
London,  there  shall  be  speeches  of  protest  in  Parliament.'  " 

I  may  add  that  both  prophecies  came  true,  but  I  had  no  idea  at  the 
time  that  I  myself  woiild  address  one  of  those  meetings.  When  the 
late  Mr.  W.  T.  Stead  urged  me  to  do  so  I  declined  on  the  ground  of 
inexperience  in  the  art  of  public  speaking.  "  Well,  then,  I  see  what 
I  must  do  with  you,"  said  Mr.  Stead  in  his  jocular  way,  "  I  must 
throw  you  into  the  deep  water  as  a  father  throws  a  boy  of  whom 
he  wants  to  make  a  swimmer."  And  he  carried  out  his  threat,  for 
next  day  I  saw  it  announced  in  the  Press  that  I  was  to  address  a 
meeting  in  the  Farringdon  Memorial  Hall.  As  Mr.  Stead  had  already 
engaged  the  hall  and  printed  the  tickets  I  felt  that  I  had  got  to 
address  that  meeting  and  I  did  so,  Mr.  Stead  acting  as  chairman. 


FCI.LlXi;    AliOlT    A    CORPSE. 


Ml  i;hi',K'i:ii   Ak'Ai;   \  i  i.i.ackk'. 
To  face  p.  2'j(>.  I'liolos.  bv  Aiillior. 


BURNING  THE  BEDOUIN  VILLAGE     267 

whom  I  saw  in  the  burned  village,  I  should  like  to 
mention  the  case  of  an  Arab  girl,  sixteen  or  seventeen 
years  old,  who  was  also  left  on  the  ground  to  die. 
Being  sick  or  wounded  she  was  unable  to  walk.  The 
soldiers,  therefore,  dragged  her  along  by  the  feet,  so 
that  her  clothes  came  up  over  her  head  and  all  her 
body  was  exposed.  At  this  the  soldiers  laughed. 
So  did  an  officer  who  accompanied  them.  A  foreigner 
remonstrated  with  them,  and  pointed  out  that  the 
girl  was  evidently  very  ill.  Then  the  soldiers  caught 
the  victim  by  the  wrists  and  dragged  her  along  the 
ground.  Her  veil  fell  off  her  face  and  this  exposure, 
so  repugnant  to  Mohammedan  ideas  of  modesty, 
seemed  to  cause  the  poor  girl  more  shame  than  the 
exposure  of  her  naked  body.  Finally,  the  soldiers 
abandoned  the  girl  at  the  gate  of  a  Red  Cross  hospital. 
She  lay  there  on  the  ground  begging  piteously  for  a 
drink  of  water — which  was  not  given  her.  A  group 
of  soldiers  and  officers  inspected  her  critically,  for 
she  was  an  extremely  beautiful  girl.  .  .   . 

Now  these  things  were  witnessed  not  only  by  my- 
self, but  by  Otto  von  Gottberg  of  the  "  Lokal- 
Anzeiger,"  who  afterwards,  like  myself,  sent  back 
his  papers  to  General  Caneva,  by  way  of  protest 
against  this  barbarity.  They  were  also  witnessed  by 
the  dragoman  of  the  German  Consulate,  who  speaks 
German,  Italian,  and  Arabic.  They  were  reported 
on  to  his  Government  by  Dr.  Tilger,  the  German 
Consul,  who  forwarded  to  Berlin  the  sworn  state- 
ments of  three  Germans  on  this  subject. 

I  know  that  these  Germans  have  been  suspected 
of  animosity  against  the  Italians.  With  regard  to 
this  incident,  however,  I  find  that  they  took  even 
too  pro-Italian  a  view.  They  could  not  believe  that 
this  Bedouin  village  could  have  been  burned  down 


268        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

for  nothing,  that  all  these  people  could  have  been 
put  to  death  because  they  might  in  future  get  arms 
and  fire  on  the  Italians.  They  assumed  that  the 
villagers  had  fired  on  the  troops,  but,  even  so,  they 
found  the  punishment  meted  out  to  them  too  severe. 
Dr.  Weibel  of  the  "  Frankfurter  Zeitung"  said  that 
he  had  heard  two  shots  fired  near  that  village  in  the 
morning,  and  he  presumed  that  those  shots  were 
fired  by  the  villagers  on  the  Italian  troops,  and  were 
the  cause  of  their  own  extermination  immediately 
after.  Herr  von  Gottberg  immediately  accepted 
that  view,  and  took  it  for  granted  that  the  villagers 
had  fired  on  some  soldiers  on  their  way  to  the  front 
and  had  wounded  several  of  them. 

Now,  will  it  be  believed  that  the  villagers  fired  no 
shots  and  committed  no  crime  whatsoever,  and  that 
their  extermination  was  carried  out  simply  as  a 
precautionary  measure — lest  they  might  become 
rebels  later  on  ?  Yet  this  is  the  explanation  given 
by  the  Italians  themselves  for  the  burning  of  this 
village,  and  for  all  the  deaths  and  murders  which 
that  measure  entailed.  Signor  Giuseppe  Bevione 
may  be  almost  styled  the  official  historian  of  the 
war,  since  he  never  criticises  the  military  authorities, 
always  praises  them,  and  dedicates  his  book,  "  Come 
Siamo  Andati  a  Tripoli,"  to  the  Hon.  Giovanni 
Giolitti  himself.  And  Signor  Bevione  calmly  tells 
us  that  this  Bedouin  village  near  Dahra  was  wiped 
out  merely  "  by  way  of  precaution  "  ! 

I  shall  give  the  whole  passage  containing  this  re- 
markable statement.  He  describes  how  he  rode  past 
the  village  in  the  morning,  and  suddenly  saw  it  set 
on  fire  by  the  troops.    Then  he  goes  on  as  follows  : 

"  A  dense  smoke  rises  behind  the  mill.     A  long 
tongue   of   fire   shoots   up   through   the   darkness 


Akah  cakkyi\(;  off  his  (ii.d  Mothkr. 


-/▼^ 


.^*%   "^.j 


'^ 


Dyixc;  Akai;  (1ii^;i.. 


To  face  p.  26S. 


I'liotcs.  by  Autlior. 


BURNING  THE  BEDOUIN  VILLAGE     269 

towards  heaven.  A  horde  of  ragamuffins,  crowded 
together  hke  a  flock  of  sheep,  pour  out  of  Mill 
Street  into  the  Market  Square  and  go  towards  the 
shore  between  a  cordon  of  soldiers.  The  miserable 
Bedouin  encampment  which  they  occupied  has 
been  set  on  fire  by  way  of  precaution."  {Si  e  dato 
fuoco  per  misura  di  sicurezza  al  miserabile  accampa- 
mento  beduino.)  "  What  a  gang  those  inhabitants 
were  !  "  Signor  Bevione  contemptuously  adds. 
"  When  I  saw  them,  they  were  going  to  seek  an 
asylum  on  the  sea-shore." 

The  only  Italian  correspondent,  so  far  as  I  know, 
who  says  that  the  inhabitants  of  the  Bedouin  village 
fired  on  the  Italians,  is  Mr.  Luigi  Barzini  of  the 
"  Corriere  della  Sera."  Mr.  Barzini  tells  us  how  an 
artillery  soldier,  who,  while  standing  in  the  Market 
Square,  was  slightly  wounded  by  a  bullet,  declared 
that  he  had  seen  the  shot  fired  from  the  Bedouin 
village.  Immediately  some  soldiers  attacked  the 
village  and  burnt  it.  None  of  the  Italian  correspon- 
dents say  that  any  search  was  made  for  arms  ;  and 
I  think  we  may  conclude  that  if  a  single  cartridge 
had  been  found,  they  would  certainly  have  mentioned 
the  fact.  But  they  all  agree  that  as  soon  as  the  hovels 
began  to  burn,  there  were  continual  reports  of  cart- 
ridges exploded  by  the  heat.  One  of  them  says  that 
the  explosions  reminded  him  of  a  battle.  But  it  may 
have  been  the  crackling  of  the  burning  wood.  I 
myself  passed  the  village  while  it  was  burning  in  the 
morning,  and  I  heard  no  such  fusillade. 

Even  if  we  accept  Mr.  Barzini's  explanation,  we 
must  admit  that  the  proceedings  of  the  Italians  on 
this  occasion  seemed  very  much  like  hanging  a  man 
first  and  trying  him  afterwards.  On  the  mere  word 
of  an  excited  soldier,   and  without  any  search  or 


270        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR  A   DESERT 

inquiry  being  made,  a  village  is  burned  and  many  of 
its  inhabitants  killed.  Then,  the  executioners  hear 
amid  the  flames  something  which  vaguely  reminds 
them  of  the  explosion  of  cartridges,  and  they  say  to 
one  another  :  "  What  a  lucky  thing  we  burned  that 
village  !  Those  people  would  have  been  sure  to  fire 
on  us  sooner  or  later." 

Moreover,  the  soldier  who  was  wounded  may  have 
been  hit  by  an  Arab  bullet  from  the  oasis,  for  at  that 
very  moment  the  Italian  line  had  been  broken  at  the 
house  of  Gemal  Bey,  and  the  Arabs  who  broke  it 
could  easily  have  fired  on  the  town  from  the  tree- 
tops.  Next  day  one  bullet  struck  the  roof  of  the 
American  Consulate,  not  far  distant,  and  another 
killed  a  soldier  close  to  that  consulate,  but  in  both 
cases  those  missiles  came  admittedly  from  the  front. 

Other  Italian  correspondents  support  Signor 
Bevione's  story.  The  military  authorities,  says  one, 
continued  energetically  le  misure  per  ripulire  V  oasi 
(the  measures  for  the  purging  of  the  oasis).  "  They 
burned  houses  and  cabins,"  he  adds  casually,  "  and 
a  Bedouin  village  at  the  gates  of  Tripoli." 

If  those  Bedouin  villagers  had  been  guilty  of 
treachery,  or  even  of  having  razors  and  empty  cart- 
ridge-cases in  their  possession,  the  fact  would  most 
certainly  have  been  mentioned  by  General  Caneva, 
by  more  than  one  of  the  forty  semi-official  Italian 
correspondents  in  Tripoli,  by  more  than  one  of  the 
hundreds  of  officers,  soldiers,  and  deputies  who  have 
written  about  this  day's  "  battle." 

I  at  once  made  the  above  facts  known  in  the 
"  Westminster  Gazette,"  and  in  the  "  Daily  News." 
If  those  Arabs  had  been  "traitors,"  that  is,  if  they 
had  fired  on  the  Italians,  that  fact  would  have  been 
quickly  brought  forward  by  the  many  active  and 


BURNING  THE  BEDOUIN  VILLAGE     271 

excellently-informed  agents  and  friends  of  the  Italian 
Government  in  this  country. 

That  it  has  not  been  brought  forward  shows  that 
this  Bedouin  village  near  Dahra  was  wiped  out  lest 
it  might  in  future  become  disloyal. 

The  terrible  story  told  in  this  chapter  is  confirmed  by  Otto  von 
Gottberg  in  the  "Berliner  Lokal-Anzeiger."  There  was  much  con- 
troversy in  the  London  "Daily  News"  on  the  subject  of  the  Arab 
boy.  Some  Enghsh  Roman  Catholics  drew  the  attention  of  Father 
Bevilacqua  to  it,  and  received  from  him  a  reply  in  which  he  admitted 
that  I  met  him  and  asked  him  to  succour  a  sick  boy.  He  says  that 
on  going  to  the  military  hospital  he  found  there  a  young  Arab  who 
had  been  wounded  and  who  was,  so  he  was  given  to  understand,  the 
child  in  whom  I  had  interested  myself. 

I  have  been  blamed  for  not  having  helped  the  boy  myself,  and  in 
defence  I  have  several  times  pointed  out  that  it  would  have  been 
impossible  for  me  to  have  done  so  owing  to  the  confusion  which  pre- 
vailed, to  the  distance  of  the  nearest  well,  and  the  impossibility 
of  obtaining  the  help  of  any  Arabs  or  Italians  to  carry  the  lad  away. 
No  Arabs  would  venture  near  the  spot.  Their  lives  would  have  been 
forfeit  had  they  done  so.  So  terrible  was  the  blood-lust  of  the  Italians 
that  the  French  Franciscan  Father,  of  whom  I  have  spoken  above,  was 
very  much  distressed  about  the  safety  of  a  little  Catholic  Levantine 
pupil  who  accompanied  him  wearing  a  fez.  The  monk  feared,  and 
with  very  good  reason,  that  at  any  moment  one  of  the  crazy  soldiers 
might  mistake  the  boy  for  an  Arab  and  bayonet  him  as  he  walked 
between  us.  Finally  we  persuaded  the  boy  to  put  his  fez  in  his 
pocket ;  and,  as  the  rest  of  his  costume  was  European,  he  escaped. 
But  this  incident  shows  how  impossible  it  would  have  been  to  bring 
Arab  labourers  to  this  spot  to  carry  away  the  sick  lad.  And  Italian 
labourers  would,  at  that  moment,  have  been  more  likely  to  finish  off 
the  boy  than  to  lend  him  a  helping  hand. 

Then  a  good  deal  of  time  was  lost  owing  to  my  certainty,  first  that 
the  hospital  authorities  would  take  him  in  as  they  had  promised, 
secondly  that  Father  Bevilacqua  would  look  after  him  as  he  had 
promised.  Father  Bevilacqua  reproaches  me  in  his  letter  with 
asking  him,  an  old  man,  to  look  after  a  case  which  I  could  just  as 
well  have  attended  to  myself;  but  the  reproach  is  hardly  fair,  for 
he  held  a  high  ecclesiastical  position,  and  among  those  Sicilian  soldiers 
his  word  was  law.  Moreover  he  had  a  high  official  position.  He  was 
connected  with  the  Red  Cross  and  wore  a  badge  of  some  kind.  I 
naturally  expected  that  by  saying  two  words  to  an  orderly  he  could 
save  the  boy's  life.  I  certainly  did  not  expect  him  to  carry  away  the 
lad  on  his  back,  though  a  son  of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi  might  not  have 
considered  even  that  beneath  him. 


272        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

When  night  had  come  on,  there  were  sentries  around  the  place 
wliere  the  lad  lay,  and  for  a  civilian  to  approach  that  place  in  the 
darkness  meant  almost  certain  death.  No  returns  have  been  made 
of  the  number  of  innocent  people,  unable  to  give  the  password,  who 
were  shot  that  night,  but  I  should  put  it  at  almost  a  dozen.  There 
^.;ls  occasional  firing  in  every  part  of  the  town,  and  in  many  cases 
the  sentinel  must  have  hit  his  mark. 

Herr  von  Gottberg  has  written  to  the  British  Press  confirming  my 
narrative;  and  Mr.  Thomas  E.  Grant  of  the  "Daily  Mirror"  also 
sent  the  following  letter  to  the  "  Daily  News,"  which  published  it  on 
November  38th : 

"On  returning  from  Tripoli  yesterday  I  found  in  'The  Church 
Times '  of  November  24th  an  attempt,  on  the  part  of  a  contributor 
who  signs  himself  'Viator,'  to  throw  doubt  and  ridicule  on  the 
story  of  a  dying  Arab  boy,  whom  Mr.  Francis  McCullagh  saw  in 
Tripoli  and  whose  hard  case  he  has  described  in  the  '  Daily  News.' 

"  As  to  the  existence  of  the  boy,  there  can  be  no  doubt.  I  saw 
him  myself  on  October  36th.  He  was  then  alive.  I  saw  him  dead 
on  the  morning  of  the  27th.  In  his  account  of  the  matter  Mr. 
McCullagh  is  far  too  modest  with  regard  to  his  own  conduct.  He 
does  not  say  that,  though  the  lad  was  undoubtedly  suffering  from 
cholera,  he  (Mr.  McCullagh)  repeatedly  risked  his  life  in  my  presence 
by  touching  him,  brushing  away  the  flies  which  tormented  him, 
examining  his  body  to  see  if  he  were  wounded,  and  trying  in  every 
way  to  make  him  comfortable.  What  the  lad  really  needed  was 
medical  attendance,  and  that,  of  course,  we  could  not  supply. 
Then,  it  soon  became  dark.  Guards  were  drawn  up  around  this 
lonely,  burned  village  in  the  oasis,  and  it  would  have  been  sheer 
madness  for  us  to  have  ventured  in  amongst  them  in  civilian  dress 
and  without  a  perfect  knowledge  of  the  Italian  language.  Besides, 
there  were  scores  of  such  cases,  and  it  would  have  been  impossible 
for  us  to  attend  to  them  all,  though  it  would  have  been  easy  for 
the  Italians  to  have  done  so,  as  their  army  in  Tripolitania  is  wonder- 
fully well  equipped  with  hospitals  and  Red  Cross  people,  the  latter, 
for  the  greater  part,  standing  idle  on  the  occasion  in  question.  We 
returned  in  the  morning  and  found  the  child  dead.  .  .   . 

"  I  know  little  of  Mr.  McCullagh,  and  have  had  little  connection 
with  him,  having  only  met  him  casually  once  or  twice  on  newspaper 
work  abroad.  But  in  the  present  instance  I  feel  very  strongly 
impelled  to  write  in  his  favour  as  an  act  of  fair-play  and  simple 
justice  against  the  sneers  of  an  anonymous  arm-chair  critic. " 

It  may  be  thought  that  I  am  dealing  at  unnecessary  length  with 
this  unpleasant  subject  of  the  atrocities.  As  a  matter  of  fact  I  am 
only  just  touching  on  the  fringe  of  it.  I  do  not  give  the  evidence  of 
Herr  Mygind  ("  Morgenpost"),  Dr.  Weibel  ("  Frankfurter  Zeitung  "), 
Dr.  Gottlob  Adolph  Krause,  or  of  a  single  Austrian  correspondent.    I 


BURNING  THE  BEDOUIN  VILLAGE     273 

do  not  want  to  make  ray  book  a  literary  chamber  of  horrors,  but  on 
the  other  hand  I  feel  it  incumbent  on  me  to  let  the  reader  judge  for 
himself  the  truth  of  the  ItaHan  statement  that  not  a  single  innocent 
Arab  was  put  to  death,  the  truth  of  Signor  Giolitti's  statement  that 
the  "  behaviour "  of  the  Italian  Army  and  Navy  on  the  present 
occasion  "  will  render  this  war  an  example  of  generous  and  chival- 
rous civilisation." 


CHAPTER    II 

THE   "PURGING"   OF  THE   OASIS 

Meanwhile  a  man-hunt  was  going  on  throughout 
an  extensive  and  once  prosperous  Arab  quarter 
extending  to  the  left  of  the  Bumehana  road  all  the 
way  to  the  Desert.  Dead  men  lay  on  the  ground 
in  all  directions.  A  tall  Fezzani  lay  almost  naked 
in  the  middle  of  the  street,  the  whole  top  of  his  head 
having  been  knocked  off  evidently  by  an  axe  or  the 
butt-end  of  a  rifle,  and  the  contents  of  the  cranium 
were  lying  several  feet  off.  The  body  was  not  cold, 
and  a  soldier  amused  himself  by  kicking  it  and 
watching  it  quiver  with  that  jelly-like  motion  of  a 
corpse  which  is  still  warm.  Some  dozens  of  soldiers 
were  wandering  about  with  revolvers  in  their  hands, 
shooting  at  every  Arab  who  showed  himself,  and 
very  frequently  at  comrades  whom  in  the  distance 
they  mistook  for  Arabs.  Those  soldiers  were  literally 
drunk  with  blood.  They  had  all  the  symptoms  of 
alcoholic  intoxication — the  flushed  face,  the  blood- 
shot eye,  the  unsteady  hand,  the  excited,  incoherent 
manner,  the  uneven  walk,  the  utter  loss  of  self-control. 
Many  of  them  had  taken  their  coats  off  and  rolled 
up  their  sleeves,  like  butchers. 

"  Why  are  you  shooting  at  those  people  ?  "  von 
Gottberg  frequently  asked,  and  the  answer  always 
was  the  same — "  Because  they  are  traitors."  It 
was  rather  vague. 

274 


•aa^aiS--- 


■  ^S^r^^=@:^2=S;->'^;^, 


Ml  KiiKki'.i)  Arab. 


Examining  a  corpse  to  see  if  it  needs  another  iuli.et. 

To  face  p.  2^5.  Photos,  by  Autlior. 


THE  "  PURGING  "  OF  THE  OASIS      275 

We  came  on  ten  soldiers.  Revolver  in  hand,  they 
were  walking  through  the  deserted  and  battered 
houses  peering  into  every  corner  and  blazing  away 
at  everything  that  moved.  Suddenly  they  caught 
sight  of  a  number  of  men  at  a  distance,  almost 
concealed  by  the  cacti,  the  palm-trees,  and  the  mud- 
walls.  They  at  once  opened  fire  on  them,  and  a 
moment  later  the  others,  who  were  certainly  Italians, 
returned  the  fire  with  interest,  and  bullets  began  to 
whiz  over  our  heads.  The  ten  soldiers  took  refuge 
behind  a  wall,  while  Gottberg,  the  German  drago- 
man, and  I  fled. 

Next  a  soldier  took  us  in  tow  in  order  to  show  us 
corpses.  He  also  had  a  revolver  in  his  hand  and  he 
walked  along  the  oasis  paths  with  the  air  of  a  proud 
hunter  bringing  visitors  to  see  his  "  bag."  And  a 
good  bag  he  had.  There  were  corpses  strewn  in  all 
directions.  One  was  that  of  a  woman.  A  little  way  off 
a  man  lay  on  his  back.  Our  guide  not  only  pointed 
him  out  with  pride,  but  even  jumped  with  glee  on 
the  dead  body,  shouting  :  "  It  was  I  who  killed  him." 

This  was  too  much.  Again  we  fled.  A  group  of 
soldiers  rushed  past  us  through  the  palm-gardens 
and,  to  our  amazement,  they  were  led  on  not  by  an 
officer  but  by  an  acquaintance  of  von  Gottberg' s, 
an  Italian  civilian,  Count  X.  The  Count  wore  civilian 
dress,  but  he  had  a  revolver  in  his  hand.  His  face 
was  flushed,  and  his  voice  was  rapid,  thick,  and 
indistinct,  like  that  of  a  drunken  man.  My  com- 
panion asked  him  something  in  German,  whereupon 
he  answered  in  the  same  language,  saying  :  "  Achtung, 
hier  sind  noch  Lebende  versteckt !  "  ("  Take  care  ! 
There  are  still  some  living  ones  hidden  here.")  With 
that  he  hurried  on,  followed  by  his  soldiers,  all  of 
whom  had  their  rifles  ready. 


276        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

Von  Gottberg  and  I  looked  at  one  another  in 
amazement.  It  was,  then,  a  regular  man-hunt. 
They  were  killing  the  Arabs,  without  inquiry,  with- 
out trial,  exactly  as  if  those  Arabs  were  wild  beasts. 

I  shall  now  let  von  Gottberg  speak  : 

"  A  gang  of  soldiers  rushed  out  from  behind 
some  houses.  By  their  epaulettes  one  could  see 
that  they  belonged  to  different  regiments.  A  little 
pleasure-party,  evidently,  drawn  from  various 
parts  of  the  army.  A  lieutenant  was  in  command  ; 
when  they  came  nearer  we  could  see  that  there 
were  prisoners  in  their  midst,  five  Arabs  whose 
arms  were  tied  behind  their  backs.  Suddenly  there 
was  a  great  shouting  in  another  direction,  and  a 
number  of  soldiers  emerged  from  a  house  dragging 
with  them  an  Arab.  This  Arab  was  added  to  the 
five  and  all  were  shot  together.  The  original  five 
may  have  been  judged  and  condemned  by  some 
regular  tribunal, — though  certainly  it  did  not 
look  like  it, — but  the  sixth  had  been  casually 
picked  up  before  our  eyes  and  added  to  the  group 
of  condemned  men  without  any  protest  being  made 
by  the  lieutenant  in  charge  of  the  party.  This 
was  not  military  justice.  It  was  lynch  law  on  a 
large  scale." 

In  the  corner  of  a  garden  I  detected  an  Arab 
family  hiding  and  I  noticed  among  them  an  infant 
only  a  few  months  old.  An  Arab,  evidently  the 
father  of  this  family,  was  sneaking  out  of  a  gate-way, 
probably  to  get  food.  He  had  the  look  of  a  hunted 
animal,  and  he  recoiled  abruptly  when  he  saw  me. 
I  did  not  see  him  shot,  but  am  certain  that  he  could 
not  have  escaped.  It  is  even  doubtful  if  any  of  his 
family  escaped. 


THE  "  PURGING  "  OF  THE  OASIS      277 

There  must,  by  the  way,  have  been  in  this  extensive 
devastated  district  many  infants  at  the  breast.  What 
has  become  of  them  ?  What  has  become  of  their 
mothers  ?  I  have  been  told  that  four  hundred 
women  and  children  were  shot  during  these  three 
days  of  panic  and  four  thousand  men — one-tenth 
the  population  of  the  whole  oasis.  Many  of  the 
women  were  shot  in  mistake  for  men.  They  were 
seen  by  the  soldiers  from  afar  off  and  immediately 
potted.  In  most  countries  a  man  cannot  be  executed 
unless  there  is  some  official  order  to  that  effect.  In 
Tripolitania  an  Arab,  in  order  to  be  safe,  must  very 
often  provide  himself  with  an  official  badge  and  a 
document  in  Italian  to  the  effect  that  he  is  not  to  be 
shot.  The  bearers  of  cholera  corpses  have  yellow 
brassards,  the  war-correspondents  white  brassards, 
and  so  on.  Near  the  German  Consulate  I  stopped 
an  Arab  gentleman  to  ask  him  for  some  directions. 
Fearing  that  I  was  about  to  shoot  him,  he  hastily 
drew  forth  an  official  Italian  permit  to  live  and 
handed  it  to  me  with  trembling  fingers.  It  was  this 
man,  an  intelligent  and  educated  Arab,  who  after- 
wards said  to  me  apropos  of  the  massacres  :  "  The 
Turks  were  bad,  but  they  spared  at  least  the  women 
and  children." 

Suddenly  hell  was  let  loose.  There  was  a  roaring 
and  a  trampling  and  a  shouting  like  that  of  a  mob  of 
mad-drunks  who  have  been  ejected  from  some  cess- 
pool of  a  public-house  after  closing-time.  Round 
the  corner  swung  some  fifty  armed  men  wearing  the 
uniform  of  the  King  of  Italy.  They  were  conducting 
six  prisoners  whose  hands  were  tied  behind  their 
backs.  Among  these  prisoners  were  a  tall  Fezzani, 
in  European  dress,  and  a  light-coloured  lad  of  twelve 
or  thirteen  years,  in  a  red  cap.    With  wild  roars  the 


278         ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

soldiers  told  us  to  stand  back.  They  swayed  to  and 
fro,  they  lurched  forward  like  drunken  men.  At 
their  head  was  a  lieutenant.  His  face  was  as  flushed, 
his  hand  as  unsteady,  as  those  of  the  most  excited 
of  his  men.  He  had  as  completely  lost  control  of  his 
soldiers  as  he  had  lost  control  of  himself.  The  private 
soldiers  bumped  into  him,  and  bumped  out  again 
without  any  apology.  They  shoved  and  jostled  him 
as  the  whole  disorderly  rabble  reeled  unsteadily 
along.  And  on  that  officer's  back  was  the  uniform 
of  the  King  of  Italy.  On  his  helmet  was  the  Crown 
and  the  Cross — the  Cross  of  the  Merciful  Christ  ! 

None  of  these  men  had  tasted  wine.  Of  that  I 
am  certain.  It  was  blood  alone  which  had  intoxicated 
them.  It  was  dangerous  to  be  anywhere  near  them, 
for,  owing  to  their  excited  condition  and  to  the  way 
in  which  they  held  their  rifles,  any  one  round  about 
might  be  accidentally  shot.  They  knew  this  them- 
selves. Hence  their  shouts  to  us,  their  wild  gestures 
to  get  out  of  the  way,  though  we  were  not  in  the  line 
of  fire  at  all. 

They  marched  their  prisoners  to  a  small  mud-hut, 
one  side  of  which  had  been  completely  demolished. 
The  floor  had  evidently  been  used  for  some  weeks  as 
a  latrine  by  at  least  a  regiment.  Into  this  house 
of  dirt  and  doom  the  prisoners  were  driven  two  by 
two,  placed  against  the  inner  wall,  and  instantly 
riddled  with  bullets.  No  word  of  command  was 
given  when  the  firing  began.  The  soldiers  all  blazed 
away  as  they  liked.  There  was  none  of  that  order, 
discipline,  and  solemnity  which,  in  civilised  armies 
like  those  of  England,  Germany,  Turkey,  Japan,  etc., 
invest  a  military  execution  with  something  of  official 
dignity.  The  officer  in  charge  of  the  party  fired  at 
the  prisoners  with  his  revolver. 


THE  "  PURGING  "  OF  THE  OASIS      279 

The  prisoners  waiting  their  turn  watched  those 
who  fell,  but  they  were  as  calm  as  if  they  were  mere 
spectators  themselves.  The  soldier  standing  beside 
the  Fezzani  kept  roaring  something  into  his  ear : 
the  fingers  of  another  soldier  kept  playing  nervously 
with  a  very  long  black  tassel  on  the  top  of  the  boy's 
red  fez.  The  restless  fingers  plaited  the  silken  threads 
of  the  long  black  tassel  as  if  they  were  the  strands 
of  hair  on  a  girl's  head.  The  boy  did  not  move. 
Like  all  the  Arabs  whom  I  have  seen  executed  in 
Tripoli,  he  was  perfectly  calm  and  silent. 

As  the  firing-line  was  only  six  feet  distant  almost 
every  bullet  told.  The  boy  went  in  the  second 
batch.  His  bronzed  face  had  almost  turned  pallid, 
but  he  was  still  perfectly  calm,  and  he  walked  over 
the  corpses  of  the  first  two  with  the  light  foot  of  a  child. 
At  the  first  volley  he  pitched  forward  on  his  face, 
dead.  His  companion  was  struck  first  on  the  right 
cheek,  then  on  the  left  shoulder :  one  could  see  that 
by  the  blood  and  by  his  quick,  nervous  motion, 
first  on  one  side,  then  on  the  other.  But  he  stood 
bolt  upright,  and  even  when  he  had  received  several 
other  wounds  he  still  attempted  to  face  his  execu- 
tioners, proudly  and  erectly,  his  back  against  the 
wall.  When  he  finally  fell,  his  body  was  still  stiff 
like  that  of  a  soldier  on  parade.  He  died  as  a  desert 
horseman  should  die. 

The  tall  Fezzani  in  European  dress  went  last.  He 
must  have  spoken  Italian,  for,  before  putting  him 
against  the  wall,  the  soldiers  questioned  him,  pressed 
him,  urged  him  to  do  something.  Evidently  they  were 
trying  to  worm  some  secret  out  of  him.  They  wanted 
to  make  him  implicate  others — and  then  to  shoot 
him  all  the  same.  But  he  only  shook  his  head.  He 
was  placed  in  the  far  corner,  as  all  the  rest  of  the 


280        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

space  was  now  covered  with  corpses  whose  naked 
limbs  and  blood-stained  bodies  were  strangely  twisted 
and  intertwined.  Beside  the  Fezzani  stood  an 
elderly,  bearded  Arab  with  a  noble  brow  and  a  yellow, 
pensive,  deeply-furrowed  face.  A  second  or  two 
before  the  fatal  volley  the  Arab  turned  to  his  com- 
panion with  the  air  of  a  man  turning  to  say  some- 
thing to  a  friend  in  the  street,  and  made  some  remark, 
whereat  the  Fezzani  nodded.  What  could  he  have 
said  ?  It  will  never  be  known,  for  the  same  instant 
there  rang  out  the  usual  deafening  report  of  rifles  and 
revolvers.  Like  a  flash  the  Fezzani  fell,  but  the  other 
span  round  and  round  like  a  top,  his  sunburnt  face 
now  deadly  pale,  his  features  contorted  in  agony. 
When  the  second  volley  came  he,  too,  slid  to  the 
ground,  dead. 

This  sight  was  witnessed  by  scores  of  soldiers  and 
officers,  who  danced  and  yelled  with  delight  as  each 
pair  of  Arabs  went  down.  A  Red  Cross  doctor  rushed 
forward  with  a  cigarette  in  his  mouth,  and  in  his 
hands  a  folding  Kodak  drawn  out  to  the  proper 
distance  and  all  ready  for  action.  This  was  one  of 
the  unoccupied  military  surgeons  who  had  promised 
to  help  the  sick  Arab  boy  and  who  had  broken  his 
promise.  The  presence  of  the  officer  -  photographer 
at  these  scenes  is  quite  a  feature  of  them.  He  gener- 
ally smokes  cigarettes  while  snapshotting.  At  the 
execution  of  Hussein,  the  German  cavass,  I  even 
saw  two  Franciscans,  one  of  whom  was  beaming 
with  smiles,  as  he  looked  at  the  body  of  the  dead 
man. 

Many  officers  and  soldiers  had  been  attracted  by 
the  sound  of  the  firing  and  now  crowded  close  to 
the  firing-party.  There  was  much  pushing  both  by 
officers  and  men  to  get  into  the  front  row.     While 


THE  "  PURGING  "  OF  THE  OASIS      281 

the  performance  lasted,  the  walls  and  windows  round 
about  had  been  crowded  with  soldier-spectators, 
and  when  the  last  Arab  fell  there  was  a  mad  rush  of 
officers,  soldiers,  and  civilians  to  view  the  corpses. 
The  air  was  filled  with  jeers  and  comments  on 
the  strange,  relaxed  attitude  of  the  bodies,  which 
seemed,  as  soon  as  life  had  departed,  to  have  become 
as  limp  as  wet  rags.  They  lay  doubled-up  and 
twisted  in  the  most  unexpected  and  unnatural 
attitudes. 

Over  four  hundred  shots  had  been  fired  at  these 
six  people.  .  .  .  And  the  Italian  newspapers  called 
this  day's  work  "  a  glorious  victory,"  "  revenge  for 
Adowa."  Alas  !  not  even  Adowa  was  as  black  a 
day  for  Italy  as  this. 

The  expression  of  sympathy  and  commiseration 
on  our  faces  must  have  excited  the  attention  of  the 
lieutenant,  who  was  now  apparently  getting  cool 
and  beginning  to  feel  the  reaction.  He  sent  to  us  a 
soldier  who,  having  been  in  America,  spoke  a  little 
English.  The  soldier  pretended  that  he  wanted  to 
see  our  papers,  but  his  mission  was  clear  when,  having 
seen  them  and  expressed  his  satisfaction,  he  tried  to 
convince  us  that  "  these  men  " — indicating  the  six 
bodies — were  traitors.  He  also  told  the  usual  story 
of  Bersaglieri  having  been  found  crucified  on  the 
23rd,  and  of  Italian  prisoners  having  been  tortured. 

I  have  never  been  able  to  understand  how  it  is 
that  those  crucified  and  mutilated  Bersaglieri  were 
not  discovered  and  photographed  till  November  26th 
— a  month  later.  The  Italians  talked  of  them  being 
at  Henni  on  the  23rd,  but  they  themselves  did  not 
evacuate  Henni  till  the  28th,  and  presumably  they 
buried  their  dead  comrades  before  the  evacuation. 
They  reoccupied  Henni  on  November  26th,  about  a 


282         ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

month  later,  and  lo  !  the  mutilated  Bersaglieri  had 
arisen  from  their  graves  and  were  again  crucified  on 
trees.  The  Italian  Freethinkers  who  manipulate 
the  Press  Bureau  are  cunning  enough  to  insist  again 
and  again  (with  their  tongues  all  the  time  in  their 
cheeks)  on  this  useful  word  "  crucified."  It  makes 
such  an  appeal,  you  know,  in  England  and  America. 
Briefly,  the  Italian  defence  is  this.  We  killed  Arabs 
on  Tuesday  because  Arabs  killed  our  men  on  Friday 
of  the  same  week. 

I  tried  to  get  away  from  this  horror,  but  only 
succeeded  in  finding  a  much  greater  horror.  Down 
the  main  road  which  runs  inland  from  Bumeliana 
marched  about  fifty  soldiers.  They  were  in  the  form 
of  a  hollow  square.  Inside  the  square  walked  about 
fifty  Arabs,  men  and  boys.  There  was  one  boy  of 
ten  or  eleven — a  slim,  lithe  child  with  a  carriage  as 
graceful  as  that  of  a  young  Arab  foal.  The  children 
seemed  to  feel  quite  safe  since  they  were  in  the 
company  of  their  parents,  uncles,  cousins,  and  all 
the  people  in  their  street.  They  looked  out  beyond 
the  glittering  line  of  bayonets  with  wide-open  but 
serene,  unalarmed  eyes.  They  were  wondering 
whither  the  foreigners  were  bringing  them. 

The  foreigners  marched  them  down  the  street 
towards  the  oasis  on  the  outskirts  of  the  town,  but 
half-a-mile  or  so  from  the  edge  of  the  desert  and  the 
Italian  trenches.  Then  a  strange  thing  happened. 
From  the  midst  of  the  date-palm  gardens  a  shot  rang 
out,  then  another  and  another.  Bullets  whizzed 
past  our  heads.  A  sudden  panic  seized  upon  the 
soldiers,  and  they  rushed  to  line  the  ditches  on  the 
side  of  the  road.  They  left  their  prisoners  standing 
in  the  middle  of  the  broad  pathway,  all  roped  to- 
gether,  all  calm  and  silent,   and  looking  somehow 


!i 


XU 


a  S 


•5!    •« 

1 .5 


2  o 


s  3 


THE  "  PURGING  "  OF  THE  OASIS      283 

in  their  long  white  garments  and  in  their  general 
attitude  like  a  flock  of  sheep  and  lambs.  Not  a 
soldier  remained  near  them  save  one,  who  drove  his 
bayonet  into  two  prisoners,  an  old  man  and  a  youth. 
The  latter  fell  on  his  back  dead,  whereupon  the 
soldier  pulled  the  dead  man's  clothes  up  to  his  waist, 
exposing  his  nakedness  as  he  lay,  and  he  lay  there 
in  the  centre  of  the  street  for  twenty-four  hours. 
The  old  man,  who  was  mortally  wounded,  was  left 
to  bleed  to  death,  and  his  moaning  was  heart-rending. 
I  afterwards  saw  a  soldier  jumping  on  his  body  and 
kicking  him. 

Along  this  road  next  day  I  saw  a  long  procession 
of  Arab  women  approach.  The  Italians  had  con- 
siderately brought  them  this  way,  as  it  was  littered 
with  dead  bodies,  some  of  them  perhaps  the  bodies 
of  these  women's  sons,  brothers,  husbands,  or  fathers. 
These  refugees  were  all  well  dressed  and  evidently  of 
good  family.  In  passing  the  dead  bodies  they  ex- 
hibited extraordinary  dignity.  Though  their  step 
sometimes  faltered,  and  though  they  repeatedly 
drew  their  veils  across  their  eyes,  not  a  sound  escaped 
them.  What  a  contrast  to  the  fog-horn  lamentations 
of  the  Jewish  and  Italian  women  in  Tripoli  city 
when,  on  October  23rd,  they  thought  the  Turk  was 
coming  !  In  front  of  these  brave  matrons  and  girls 
walked  a  gentle  little  Arab  boy.  He  was,  with  the 
exception  of  the  Italian  soldiers,  the  only  member  of 
the  male  sex  in  the  party.  In  his  hand  was  a  little 
stick  and  at  the  end  of  it  a  white  flag,  and  lo  !  a  Cross 
— the  Red  Cross  of  Christ  !  Has  Christ,  then,  to  do 
with  this  war,  where  one  side  is  Mohammedan  and 
the  other  worse  than  Mohammedan  ? 

As  gently  as  I  could,  I  tried  to  make  the  boy  hold 
his  little  flag  so  that  the  light  should  fall  on  it  in  such 


284        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

a  way  that  it  could  be  photographed.  His  hand  was 
as  chilly  as  that  of  a  corpse,  and  without  even  looking 
at  me  he  resigned  his  little  ensign  to  me,  closed  his 
eyes,  and  bent  his  head  in  silence.  A  chill  went  to 
the  marrow  of  my  bones.  The  child  had  evidently 
taken  me  for  an  Italian  "  hero,"  and  had  expected 
that  I  was  going  to  plunge  a  bayonet  into  him. 

But  I  am  anticipating.  I  must  return  to  the  fifty 
condemned  men  calmly  standing  together  in  the 
centre  of  the  roadway  and  to  the  fifty  panic-stricken 
executioners  lining  the  ditches.  The  soldiers  kept  up 
a  lively  exchange  of  fire  with  some  people  in  the 
undergrowth  who  replied.  I  knew  that  both  sides 
were  Italians,  but  God  or  the  devil  seems  to  have 
blinded  the  eyes  of  these  bloodthirsty  and  half -crazy 
men  so  that  they  shot  one  another  right  and  left. 
The  same  panic  reigned  that  day  all  over  Tripoli. 
It  reigned  even  in  the  great  Sok,  or  seashore  market, 
at  the  foot  of  the  citadel.  Even  here  two  soldiers 
Avere  shot,  undoubtedly  by  some  of  their  own  comrades 
firing  wildly  from  a  distance. 

The  lieutenant  in  command  of  the  party  to  which 
I  had  attached  myself  was  utterly  ignored  by  his 
men,  who  fired  without  consulting  him  at  all.  He 
was  a  swollen,  purple-faced  little  man  who  kept  up 
an  almost  perpetual  roar  at  the  top  of  his  voice, 
though  nobody  paid  the  least  attention  to  his  orders 
except  to  disobey  them.  Throughout  the  entire 
army  the  same  demoralisation  prevailed. 

Finally,  many  other  officers,  as  well  as  a  detach- 
ment of  blue-coated  gendarmes,  ran  up ;  and,  after 
they  had  fired  for  half  -  an  -  hour  on  their  own 
comrades  in  the  date-palm  garden,  the  soldiers 
composing  the  convoy  were  persuaded  to  proceed 
with    their    dread    work.      They    again    surrounded 


THE  "  PURGING  "  OF  THE  OASIS      285 

their  prisoners  and  marched  them  into  an  empty 
and  partially  dismantled  mud-hut  exactly  like  the 
one  which  I  have  already  described,  and  evi- 
dently used,  like  that  one,  as  a  regimental  latrine. 
At  the  corner  of  the  house  one  of  the  soldiers,  unable 
any  longer  to  control  his  ungovernable  lust  for 
blood,  suddenly  drove  his  bayonet  into  the  side  of 
one  prisoner,  an  old  man,  who  instantly  fell  dead. 
The  others  were  hurried  by  groups  into  the  house. 
Then  the  usual  horror  began.  I  need  not  describe 
it  twice.  The  floor  of  the  house  became  so  encumbered 
with  corpses  that  the  victims  who  came  last  could 
not  find  standing-room  and  had  to  climb  a  pile  of 
dead  bodies.  As  their  hands  were  tied  behind  their 
backs,  some  of  them  stumbled  several  times  in  doing 
so.  When  the  work  of  the  firing-party  was  finished, 
the  floor  of  the  house  presented  the  same  awful  aspect 
of  tangled  and  intertwined  limbs  and  bodies  as  I  have 
already  described.  Great  pieces  of  plaster  had  been 
knocked  off  the  wall  by  bullets.  In  other  places  there 
were  great  splashes  of  blood.  These  blood-stains 
were  at  the  height  of  a  man's  head  above  the  ground. 
The  blood  must  therefore  have  spurted  from  some 
large  arteries  in  the  heads  or  necks  of  the  Arabs  before 
they  fell. 

But  despite  the  great  number  of  bullets  which 
had  been  poured  into  the  house,  many  of  the  Arabs 
still  remained  with  some  faint  spark  of  life  in  them. 
The  lieutenant  in  command  began  firing  his  revolver 
at  every  head  he  saw  among  the  hideous  pile  of  dead 
and  dying.  So  did  the  tub-shaped  Secret  Service 
man  whom  I  had  met  that  morning  at  the  front.  A 
number  of  brother-officers  gallantly  helped  in  this 
sportsmanlike  work,  which  continued  for  twenty 
minutes. 


286        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A  DESERT 

The  blue-coated  gendarmes  also  took  part  in  the 
fun.  But,  despite  all  this  shooting,  there  still 
remained  in  that  heap  men  and  boys  who  gave  signs 
of  life.  The  reason  probably  was  that  some  of  those 
who  were  shot  first  fell  without  being  killed  out- 
right, and  were  afterwards  shielded  from  subsequent 
bullets  by  the  mass  of  bodies  that  fell  on  top  of  them. 
Sometimes,  however,  supposed  corpses  lying  in 
exposed  places  gave  gruesome  and  startling  signs  of 
vitality.  On  top  of  the  pile  lay  an  old  grey-bearded 
Arab,  his  head  propped  up  against  the  wall  and  his 
whole  air  and  attitude  exactly  that  of  an  aged  man 
sleeping  in  a  bed.  Suddenly,  while  the  body  re- 
mained motionless  and  dead,  the  head  began  to  roll 
slowly  and  deliberately  from  side  to  side  like  that  of 
a  person  in  an  uneasy  sleep,  like  that  of  some  horrible 
mechanical  doll  with  a  head  that  worked  in  a  socket. 
The  mouth  and  eyes  were  closed,  the  body  was  still, 
but  the  head  rolled  from  side  to  side  with  the  regu- 
larity of  a  pendulum.     It  was  a  dreadful  sight. 

The  sportsmanlike  lieutenant  aimed  at  the  head 
once,  but  missed.  The  head  continued  to  roll  from 
side  to  side.  The  lieutenant  aimed  again.  This  time 
he  hit,  for  suddenly  the  motion  ceased,  while,  with  a 
sharp  jerk,  the  mouth  sprang  wide  open  and  remained 
like  that.    The  head  had  ceased  to  live. 

There  still  remained  a  moaning  at  the  very  bottom 
of  the  pile  near  the  door.  The  sportsmanlike  lieu- 
tenant and  his  brother-officers  emptied  their  revolvers 
again  and  again  into  that  part  of  the  hillock  of  bodies 
from  which  the  groans  came.  But  the  sounds  still 
continued,  the  hoarse  plaintive  sighing  of  an  old,  old 
man,  asleep  and  very  ill.  Finally,  the  soldiers  were 
again  invited  to  fire  with  their  rifles,  and  the  corpses 
were  once   more  raked  with  half-a-dozen  volleys. 


To  face  p.  2S6. 


A    I'll.t    Ol-     Ml-  IV    MIA    AM)    ImV; 


THE  "  PURGING  "  OF  THE  OASIS      287 

When  I  listened  again  at  the  door  the  moaning  had 
ceased.  But  all  this  firing  at  very  close  range  had 
torn  and  lacerated  the  corpses  in  a  frightful  manner. 
The  whole  face  or  forehead  was  sometimes  shot  away, 
brains  and  entrails  hung  out — but  the  subject  is  far 
too  ghastly  for  detailed  description.  I  am  afraid, 
indeed,  that  much  of  what  I  have  already  given  is 
unsuitable  for  a  book,  but  it  is  just  as  well,  perhaps, 
that  the  reader  should  know,  firstly,  what  war  is, 
and,  secondly,  what  kind  of  warfare  it  is  which  the 
Italians  are  now  waging  in  Tripolitania. 

Some  military  readers  of  the  foregoing  particulars 
regarding  the  Italian  method  of  warfare  in  Tripoli 
may  be  inclined  to  regard  the  writer  as  unduly 
sensitive.  But  such  is  not  the  case.  I  have  been 
through  a  great  war  from  start  to  finish.  I  have 
seen  Chinese  executed  by  Chinese,  Chinese  spies 
executed  by  Russians,  Turkish  traitors  executed  by 
Turks,  and,  save  on  the  occasion  of  the  first  execution 
I  saw,  I  was  not  in  the  least  disturbed  and  never 
made  any  protest.  Instead  of  making  protests,  I 
made  photographs.  But  the  recent  butcheries  in 
Tripoli  were  of  such  a  nature  as  would  arouse  even 
Abd-ul-Hamid  or  M.  Puriskevitch  to  indignant  pro- 
testation. Mr.  Otto  von  Gottberg,  a  Prussian 
officer,  a  firm  believer  in  the  strong  hand  and  in 
drastic  military  action,  has  for  the  first  time  in  his 
life  taken  the  side  of  the  civilians.  I  need  not  mention 
the  names  of  the  British  journalists  who  take  the 
same  side.  I  think  I  am  right  in  saying  that  the 
only  journalists  who  regard  the  severity  of  General 
Caneva  as  justifiable  are  Italian  journalists. 

It  may  be  urged  that,  in  the  cases  I  have  already 
given,  the  boys  of  whom  I  speak  were  really  guilty, 
and  had  really  used  arms.    But  it  is  impossible  that 


288        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR   A  DESERT 

the  sick  boy  or  the  old  women  could  have  done  so. 
It  is  impossible  also  that  one-tenth  of  the  murdered 
Arabs  whom  I  saw  could  have  been  regularly  tried 
before  a  military  tribunal.  They  often  lay  singly  on 
the  roadside.  They  never  had  weapons  of  any  kind, 
and  sometimes  they  looked  as  if  they  had  just  got 
out  of  bed  and  had  not  had  time  to  dress. 

The  following  instances  which  I  have  collected 
from  trustworthy  sources  show  that  cold-blooded 
murder  was  the  order  of  the  day. 

One  of  the  chiefs  of  the  Jewish  community  tells 
me  that  a  blind  Jewish  beggar  and  his  son  were  both 
murdered.  They  were  arrested,  and  it  shows  what 
a  farce  their  trial  must  have  been  when,  despite  all 
their  protestations  that  they  were  Jews,  the  soldiers 
insisted  that  they  were  Mohammedans  and  killed 
them  both.  All  the  Jews  in  Tripoli  are  enthusiastic- 
ally on  the  Italian  side,  and  would  dread  nothing  so 
much  as  the  return  of  the  Turks.  It  is  evident, 
therefore,  that  these  two  Jewish  lives  were  left 
entirely  to  the  decision  of  an  ignorant  soldiery, 
panic-stricken,  and  inflamed  to  madness  by  stories 
of  the  mutilations  inflicted  on  their  wounded.  Dani 
Saada,  the  elder  Jew,  did  not  die  at  the  first  volley. 
The  soldiers  therefore  broke  his  legs  with  the  butts 
of  their  rifles  and  beat  him  to  death.  He  was  sixty- 
two  years  of  age,  and  his  son  was  twenty-six. 

The  butchery  continued  for  several  days.  Soldiers 
met  well-dressed  natives  on  the  road.  They  took 
them  into  empty  houses,  robbed  and  shot  them.  The 
Italians  abandoned  on  the  second  day  their  positions 
on  the  east  and  fell  back.  Old  Arab  cooks  and 
labourers  who  had  attached  themselves  to  the  new- 
comers hobbled  after  them.  The  soldiers  took  pot- 
shots  at   these   unfortunate   people.      Sometimes   a 


THE  "  PURGING  "  OF  THE  OASIS      289 

man  went  back  to  finish  off  the  wounded  wretches 
with  the  bayonet.  Hundreds  were  buried  in  the 
desert  sand,  hundreds  were  thrown  into  the  sea  ;  and, 
for  many  days  afterwards,  the  TripoHtan  fishers  were 
continually  finding  these  corpses  in  their  nets.  The 
oasis  stank  with  unburied  bodies.  The  soldiers  refused 
to  inter  them  on  account  of  the  smell,  and  the  Arabs 
refused  to  do  so  unless  forced  to  work  at  the  point  of 
the  bayonet.  The  sea-breeze  was  tainted  with  the  smell 
of  swollen  and  putrid  masses  floating  on  the  surface 
of  the  bay. 

The  whole  truth  about  these  massacres  will  perhaps 
never  be  known  unless,  indeed,  some  Socialist  officer 
or  soldier  in  General  Caneva's  army  lets  the  world 
have  his  experiences.  Permissions  had  been  given  to 
newspaper  correspondents  to  circulate  everywhere. 
When  the  murders  began,  all  these  permits  were 
stopped  and  an  attempt  was  made  to  prevent  any 
foreign  newspaper-man  visiting  the  places  where  the 
worst  and  biggest  butcheries  were  carried  out.  The 
military  attaches  were  detained  in  Italy  and  then 
sent  on  to  Benghazi,  or  Derna,  so  that  they  should  not 
witness  the  horrors  in  Tripoli  city. 

During  the  early  days  of  the  occupation  the 
Arabs  used  to  carry  the  Italian  wounded  into  the 
Italian  lines  under  a  flag  of  truce.  It  was  not  till 
the  invaders  began  butchering  innocent  women  and 
children  that  the  Arabs  mutilated  the  bodies  of  some 
Italian  soldiers.  These  cases  of  mutilation  have  been 
made  much  of  by  the  Italians.  But  even  if  the 
Bedouins  had  committed  unheard-of  atrocities,  that 
was  no  reason  why  Rome  should  follow  suit. 

The  real  culprit  is  not  the  Italian  soldier.  On  the 
battle-field  every  soldier  tends  to  become  a  brute.  It 
is,  however,  the  duty  of  the  officer  to  hold  him  in 


290        ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

check.  The  English,  German,  American,  or  French 
officer  would  have  done  so.  Here  it  is,  however, 
where  the  Italian  officer  failed. 

I  shall  now  give  some  more  details  of  the  cold- 
blooded murders  committed  by  Italian  soldiers 
during  those  terrible  days. 

An  old  marabout  (holy  man)  who  sat  in  the  sand 
near  Sokra  in  the  oasis  begging  for  alms  was  shot 
dead.  The  villagers  set  the  dead  man  on  a  donkey 
and  led  him  round  about  the  oasis  to  show  the  people 
how  the  foreigners  treat  their  saints. 

Ali  Frefer,  a  butcher  of  Sania,  a  hamlet  in  the 
oasis,  was  killing  a  sheep  when  some  Italian  soldiers 
arrived  upon  the  scene,  took  his  axe  from  him,  and 
killed  him  with  it. 

In  Tripoli  a  blind  beggar  was  killed  by  soldiers. 

A  friend  of  mine  had  an  old  Arab  servant  for 
twenty-eight  years  a  cripple.    The  soldiers  shot  him. 

Hundreds  of  similar  instances  could  be  given. 
Almost  every  correspondent,  almost  every  foreign 
resident,  has  his  own  list  of  horrors.  Every  Consul 
has  sent  official  reports  on  the  subject  to  his  Govern- 
ment. 

Not  only  was  the  possession  of  powder  and  rifles  a 
capital  offence.  The  possession  of  a  razor,  a  dagger, 
a  knife,  or  anything  that  looked  like  a  weapon  was 
equally  a  capital  offence.  Now,  a  razor  is  an  absolute 
necessity  in  every  Moslem  family.  It  has  a  religious 
significance,  being  sometimes  used  in  the  ceremonial 
shaving  of  the  head  in  the  case  of  males,  and  of  the 
armpits  in  that  of  females.  Yet  Arabs  were  murdered 
by  the  Italians  for  being  in  possession  of  razors. 
Butchers  were  killed  with  their  own  axes.  Arabs 
found  in  possession  of  watches,  buttons,  and  other 
articles  supposed  to  have  belonged  to  Italians  who 


THE  "  PURGING  "  OF  THE  OASIS      291 

had  disappeared  or  been  murdered  were  shot  without 
any  inquiry  being  made. 

An  Austrian   explorer,   Herr   Artbauer,   gives  the 
following  particulars  : 

"  Three  blind  beggars  came  along  a  row  of  houses 
in  Sokra,  when  some  Bersaglieri,  who  were  in  a  hut 
at  the  corner  of  the  street,  fired  and  killed  them. 
Till  evening  their  bodies  were  left  lying  where  they 
had  fallen.  Three  children  fled  out  of  the  oasis 
into  the  graveyard  of  Sidi  el  Masri.  The  soldiers 
composing  the  Italian  post  there  opened  a  rapid 
fire  on  the  little  ones,  the  eldest  of  whom  was  only 
eight  years.  At  Sania  a  peaceful  resident,  Moham- 
med Mosuri,  was  coming  from  the  market  with  a 
little  money,  when  he  was  stopped,  searched,  robbed 
and  murdered.  On  the  Gargaresh  road  two  women 
were  riding  on  two  camels.  The  Italians  called 
on  them  to  halt,  but  not  understanding  Italian  they 
continued  their  course.  Their  camels  had  not 
gone  a  yard,  however,  when  the  sentinels  opened 
fire,  killing  both  women.  Another  woman  was 
murdered  on  the  Bumeliana  road  because  she  did 
not  lift  her  veil.  Some  Italian  soldiers  who  were 
passing  by  and  who  heard  a  wandering  preacher 
chanting,  sent  him  alms  in  the  shape  of  bullets  ; 
and  the  old  man  fell  dead  without  a  moan.  This 
afternoon  (October  26th)  I  saw  a  twelve-year-old 
boy  drinking  water  at  a  well  just  outside  Sania. 
Suddenly  a  report  rang  out  very  close  and  the  lad 
fell  to  the  ground  with  a  shriek.  At  the  Suk  el 
Djuma  (Friday  market)  on  the  Tagiura  road  a 
woman  knelt  over  the  body  of  her  husband, 
wailing  loudly  according  to  the  custom  of  the 
country.     Her  wailing  did  not  last  long,  for  an 


292        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

Italian  bullet  soon  stretched  her  dead  beside  the 
body  of  her  spouse." 

Otto  von   Gottberg   has   furnished  the  following 
particulars  : 

"  Next  morning  (October  27th)  I  went  to  the 
left  from  the  Bumeliana  main  road  behind  the 
Cavalry  Barracks  in  the  oasis.  I  did  not  go  far, 
as  the  road  was  too  dangerous.  Out  of  an  Arab 
hut,  I  saw  a  young  woman  emerge  holding  in  her 
right  hand  the  fingers  of  her  little  son,  and  in  her 
left  a  water-pitcher.  The  street  was  perfectly 
tranquil,  but  suddenly  three  shots  rang  out  and 
the  woman  fell  dead.  The  screaming  child  fled 
back  into  the  house.  I  must  admit  that  the  horror 
of  this  sight  made  me  stagger  and  almost  fall  to 
the  ground.  On  recovering  myself,  I  hurried  on 
and,  meeting  an  officer,  I  said  to  him  :  '  Your 
people  have  just  shot  a  mother  at  the  well  !  ' 

"  The  officer  seemed  really  shocked,  but  he  said  : 
'  Our  soldiers  cannot  always  see  at  the  first  glance 
if  it  is  a  man  or  a  woman  that  they  have  before 
them.' 

"  This  answer  shows  that,  whether  innocent  or 
guilty,  the  Arab  man  is  lawful  prey.  I  shall  give 
still  another  picture.  Over  the  mud -wall  of  a 
house  some  soldiers  were  firing.  As  we  went  up 
to  them  they  were  in  the  garden,  bending  over 
the  body  of  a  grey-haired  old  man  whom  they  had 
just  shot.  On  our  faces  was  the  question  :  '  Why  ?  ' 
By  way  of  answer  the  under-officer  fumbled  in 
the  dead  man's  clothes  and  triumphantly  drew 
forth — a  razor ! 

"  This  murder  was  justified  by  an  order  to  the 
effect  that  every  knife  more  than  two  inches  long 


THE  "  PURGING  "  OF  THE  OASIS      293 

is  to  be  regarded  as  a  weapon.  Now  in  this  country 
even  the  women  carry  a  razor  about  with  them 
owing  to  the  fact  that  its  use  is  prescribed  by  their 
rehgion  for  the  removal  of  hairs  from  the  arms. 
And  this  razor  is  never  less  than  two  inches  long  !  " 

Even  as  late  as  November  11th,  the  Tripoli  corre- 
spondent of  the  "  Vossische  Zeitung  "  says  (Novem- 
ber 20th,  1911)  that : 

"  I  myself  have  more  than  once  seen  Arabs 
who  went  into  the  gardens  to  work  or  to  mow 
some  grass,  simply  shot  down." 

In  some  cases  that  have  been  made  known  to  me 
the  Sicilian  soldiers  acted  like  brigands.  I  am 
thinking  particularly  of  one  case  in  which  some 
soldiers  searched  an  oasis  shopkeeper  and,  on  finding 
some  money  in  his  purse,  killed  him  for  the  money. 

When  the  reaction  set  in  very  many  of  the  private 
soldiers  became  insane  and  had  to  be  sent  back  to 
Italy.  The  Nationalists  tried  to  make  capital  out 
of  their  infirmity  by  giving  out  that  it  was  the  result 
of  the  atrocities  of  the  Arabs.  In  some  cases  this 
may  have  been  so,  but  in  the  greater  number  of 
instances  I  believe  that  the  insanity  was  due  to  the 
atrocities  committed  by  the  Italians  themselves. 
On  March  28th  I  was  stopped  in  front  of  the  American 
Consulate  by  an  Italian  soldier  who  was  wandering 
aimlessly  about  and  obviously  deranged.  His  belt 
and  all  his  weapons  had  been  taken  away  from  him, 
however,  so  that  he  was  not  dangerous,  but  Heaven 
alone  knows  how  many  murders  he  had  committed 
before  he  was  disarmed.  A  more  disgusting  spectacle 
I  have  seldom  seen,  for  his  eyes  were  bloodshot,  he 
was  dirty  and  unshaven,  his  mouth  hung  open,  and 
the  slaver  poured  down  on  his  uniform.     Seeing  in 


294        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

me  a  stranger  and  therefore  a  possible  victim,  he 
approached  me  and,  getting  his  wandering  wits 
together  by  an  effort,  tried  to  bully  me.  He  asked 
me  if  I  were  a  Turkish  officer,  if  I  had  papers  of 
identity ;  and  his  manner  clearly  indicated  an  intention 
of  blackmailing  and  terrorising  me.  I  had  no  difficulty 
in  shaking  off  this  pitiable  object,  but  how  many 
wretched  Arabs  had  not  he  and  men  like  him  victim- 
ised and  murdered  during  those  awful  days  of  the 
Terror ! 

And  now  in  the  madhouses  of  Italy,  they  pay 
the  penalty  themselves.  For  your  butcher  is  not 
always  a  man  of  iron  nerve.  In  this  case  many  of 
the  butchers  were  probably  neurotic  city  youths, 
and  the  awful  debauch  of  blood,  the  unlimited 
licence  to  kill,  kill,  kill,  had  been  too  much  for  their 
weak  nerves  and  feeble  brains.  They  were  nervous 
wrecks  before  the  massacres  had  come  to  an  end. 

These  "  human  abattoirs "  were  not,  however, 
the  worst  feature  of  the  massacres.  The  worst 
feature  has  never  yet  been  described.  I  mean  the 
famine  and  sickness  which  followed  them  and  which 
naturally  resulted  from  them.  This  famine  and  pesti- 
lence carried  off  many  women,  children  and  old  men 
whom  the  heroes  of  la  terza  Italia  had  spared. 

In  many  humble  families  the  bread-winner  had 
been  taken  away,  the  little  hut  on  the  sea-shore  or 
under  the  palm -trees  had  been  burned,  the  little 
store  of  grain  destroyed.  Hardly  had  the  massacres 
ceased  when  the  Market  Square  and  the  courtyards 
of  the  mosques  became  crowded  with  the  sick,  the 
wounded,  and  the  old.  They  had  no  food,  no  medicine, 
no  resting-place  save  the  bare  ground.  Cholera  and 
other  diseases  made  short  work  of  them.  That 
dreaded  word  cholera   did,   it    is   true,   startle   the 


THE  "  PURGING  "  OF  THE  OASIS      295 

Italian  authorities  somewhat  (for  their  own  sakes) ; 
and  on  November  21st  General  Caneva  thought  it 
good  policy  to  bestow  some  grain,  rice,  and  clothes 
on  those  poor  people.  This  gift  was  sent  through 
Prince  Hassuna  Pasha,  the  Vice-Governor,  and,  of 
course,  the  official  telegraphic  agency  "  Stefani  '^ 
trumpeted  the  fact  throughout  the  world. 

On  the  whole.  General  Caneva  comes  badly  out 
of  this  business.  He  proved  himself  a  little  barrack- 
square  martinet,  not  an  administrator.  He  forgot 
that  he  had  taken  over  the  responsibility  for  ruling 
many  poor  people  of  another  race,  and  allowed  his 
soldiers  to  butcher  these  people  without  making  the 
slightest  attempt  to  stop  them,  to  administer  justice, 
or  to  make  any  kind  of  investigation.  The  Arabs, 
who  are  quick  to  see  a  sense  of  justice  even  in  a 
conqueror,  cannot  soon  forget  this  blunder  of  the 
Italians ;  and,  as  "  The  Times "  correspondent 
prophesies,  the  events  of  October  23rd-27th  will 
react  for  many  years  on  the  invaders  themselves. 

It  is  reacting  even  now.  All  the  Englishmen  who 
have  been  with  the  Turks  dwell  upon  the  wide 
currency  which  the  story  of  the  oasis  massacres  has 
obtained.  Writing  from  the  Turkish  lines  on  March 
27th,  a  correspondent  of  "  The  Times  "  says  that 
"  from  Tunis  to  Aziziah  the  country  rings  with  tales 
of  wanton  destruction  committed  by  the  Italians,  of 
the  massacre  of  defenceless  men,  and  the  slaying 
of  women  and  small  children,  even  children  at  the 
breast.  .  .  .  These  tales  have  now  penetrated  into 
the  ends  of  the  Desert  and  the  Sudan  (whence  rein- 
forcements are  consequently  beginning  to  arrive  in 
larger  and  larger  numbers),  and  .  .  .  they  have 
aroused  in  their  believers  an  undying  hatred  of  the 
Italians." 


296        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

The  universality  of  this  hate  is  one  of  the  proofs 
that  there  was  a  massacre.  Alone  it  would  be  suf- 
ficient to  disprove  the  Italian  assertion  that  not  a 
single  innocent  Arab  was  killed.  For  the  Arab  is 
not  easily  shocked  by  massacre.  He  is  accustomed 
to  it  on  a  small  scale,  and  dabbles  in  it  himself 
occasionally.  Only  something  colossal,  frightful,  and 
stupefying  could  have  aroused  him  as  he  is  now 
aroused  from  the  Yemen  to  Algeria,  from  the  Mediter- 
ranean to  the  heart  of  Africa.  And  neither  the  Arab 
nor  the  Turk  could  have  invented  a  massacre  "  story," 
as  some  pro-Italians  have  suggested.  They  invent 
many  things,  it  is  true,  but  their  taste  in  mendacity 
and  exaggeration  lies  in  quite  a  different  direction 
from  this.  They  might  say,  for  example,  that  they 
killed  tens  of  thousands  of  Italians,  re-took  Tripoli, 
Derna,  Tobruk,  and  Benghazi,  drove  all  the  Italians 
back  to  their  ships,  and  captured  an  aeroplane. 
But  it  would  never  have  occurred  to  them  to  fabricate 
a  massacre  legend.  It  never  occurred  to  the  Mahdi 
who  fought  us  in  the  Sudan,  nor  even  to  the  opponents 
of  the  French  in  Algeria.  And  even  if  the  Arabs 
did  fabricate  such  a  story,  they  would  not  die  in 
hundreds  for  their  own  fabrication  as  they  are  dying 
to-day.  The  merciless  nature  of  this  war  and  the 
unparalleled  fury  with  which  the  Arabs  fight  are 
proofs  of  the  massacre.  There  is  hardly  one  of  them 
who  has  not  had  some  friend  or  relation  butchered  in 
the  oasis.  Some  of  them  have  seen  the  massacres. 
Once  there  was  a  sallow  Arab  clerk  who  worked  in 
a  French  shipping-office  opposite  the  Hotel  Minerva 
in  Tripoli.  On  October  26th  an  Italian  soldier, 
accompanied  by  an  ex-Turkish  policeman,  called  on 
him  and  told  him  that  his  brother  had  just  been 
executed.     The  grief  of  this  unfortunate  clerk  was 


MiXAKET    DISOriSEl)    WITH    FALM-FROXDS    SO    AS   TO    PREVEXT    IT   SERVIXG 
AS    A    MARK    FOR    TURKISH    ARTILLERY. 
To  face  p.  IQ/. 


THE  "  PURGING  "  OF  THE  OASIS      297 

pitiable  to  see.  The  brother  may  have  been  a  child 
or  a  cripple,  sitting  at  home  in  a  little  hut  among 
the  palm-gardens  waiting  for  the  return  of  the  bread- 
winner. His  guilt  must  have  been  impossible  ;  other- 
wise his  brother  would  have  been  to  some  extent 
prepared  for  the  result  of  it.  But,  with  a  loud  cry, 
he  collapsed  utterly.  He  threw  himself  flat  on  his 
face  on  the  floor. 

Next  day  his  high  office  stool  was  vacant.  His 
high  office  stool  knew  him  no  more.  He  had  done 
what  every  youth  in  England  would  have  done 
under  similar  circumstances.  He  was  out  in  the 
Desert  with  a  rifle  in  his  hand.  Scores  of  men 
like  him,  scores  of  eye-witnesses  whose  testimony 
could  not  be  doubted,  gradually  made  clear  to  all 
the  Arab  race  the  great  Christian  crime  at  which  the 
Tripolitan  palm-groves  had  shuddered. 

And  not  only  did  the  Italians  hopelessly  alienate 
the  Arabs  by  their  rank  injustice.  They  alienated 
them  still  more,  perhaps,  by  their  tactlessness  in 
religious  matters.  The  soldiers  violated  many  of  the 
mosques  in  the  territory  which  they  occupied.  They 
were  not  aware  of  the  intense  dislike  of  the  natives 
to  seeing  Christians  enter  even  the  grounds  of  a 
mosque.  They  turned  some  of  them  into  observa- 
tories and  filled  others  with  soldiers.  The  Italian 
newspapers  have  published  photographs  of  minarets 
crowded  with  troops.  One  Italian  writer  describes 
for  his  readers  how  "  from  the  terrace  whence  the 
muezzin  once  called  the  faithful  to  prayer,  seven  or 
eight  Italian  rifles  now  dominate  the  surrounding 
country." 

Another  mistake  made  by  the  Italians  was  their 
wholesale  violation  of  the  harems  and  their  wholesale 
unveiling  of  Arab  women. 


298        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

Alarmed  by  foolish  stories  about  Turkish  spies 
who  had  masqueraded  as  veiled  women,  they  had 
sometimes  shot  women  who  refused  to  unveil.  The 
result  was  that  during  the  last  week  of  October  the 
veils  were  torn  from  the  faces  of  nearly  all  the  Moham- 
medan women  in  Tripoli.  One  never  saw  a  veiled 
woman  in  the  streets,  and  on  the  Italian  steamers  by 
which  Turkish  families  left,  all  the  women  were  un- 
veiled. To  any  one  who  knows  how  strongly  the 
Arabs  feel  on  this  subject  of  the  veiling  of  women, 
the  intolerance  of  the  Italians  on  this  point  will 
seem  one  of  the  gravest  mistakes  they  made. 

What  renders  their  case  hopeless,  however,  is  their 
immovable  and  unalterable  conviction  that  they  have 
done  the  correct  thing  as  no  other  race  under  heaven 
could  have  done  it.  One  of  their  commanders,  we  are 
told,  won  all  the  native  hearts  "  con  un  impeto  e  una 
genialitd  di  cui  sola  la  nostra  razza  e  capace,  senza  un 
errore  d'intelligenza  o  d'energia  "  ("  with  an  impetuosity 
and  a  geniality  of  which  only  our  race  is  capable,  with- 
out an  error  of  intelligence  or  of  energy  "). 

Even  if  we  leave  the  massacres  out  of  account, 
we  must  admit  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  they  have 
behaved  ever  since  they  came  to  Tripoli  with  the 
tactfulness  of  the  proverbial  bull  in  a  china-shop. 


CHAPTER    III 

HASSUNA   KARAMANLI 

Even  if  we  admit  for  a  moment  (what  I  do  not 
in  the  least  believe,  however)  that  the  extension 
of  Italy's  rule  to  Tripoli  would  be  a  blessing, 
we  must  also  confess  that  with  a  little  tact,  a 
very  little  tact,  the  Italians  might  have  avoided 
bloodshed  almost  altogether.  They  should  have 
allowed  themselves  to  be  guided  by  their  staunch 
friend,  Prince  Hassuna  Karamanli,  whom  they 
made  Vice-Governor  of  Tripoli.  Prince  Hassuna,  of 
whom  I  shall  have  more  to  say  hereafter,  was  a 
grandson  of  Jussef  Karamanli,  the  independent  Bey 
of  Tripoli,  whom  the  Turks  dethroned  in  the  middle 
of  the  last  century  ;  and  the  obvious  plan  of  the 
Italians,  if  they  wished  to  possess  themselves  of 
Tripolitania,  was  to  come  in  as  the  supporters  of 
Hassuna  against  the  Turks. 

If  they  had  made  Hassuna  king  and  allowed  him 
to  sign  all  the  proclamations  to  the  Arabs,  to  give 
largess  to  the  chiefs,  and  to  act  as  a  potentate 
generally,  they  could  have  ruled  Tripoli  as  the 
French  rule  Tunis.  Karamanli  himself  had  pointed 
out  this  course  to  the  Italians  in  1890.  Crispi,  who 
was  then  in  power  and  who  had  designs  on  Tripolitania, 
conceived  the  brilliant  project  of  getting  suddenly 
excited  even  to  tears  by  the  wrongs  of  the  Karamanli, 
and  sending  a  few  battle-ships  to  take  their  part 

299 


300        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

against  the  Turkish  oppressor.  The  whole  story  has 
now  come  to  Hght  since  there  is  no  longer  any  necessity 
for  concealing  it,  and  the  confidential  correspondence 
between  the  Arab  Prince  and  the  Italian  Premier 
has  been  published.  Crispi  asked  Signor  Grande,  the 
Italian  Consul  in  Tripoli,  to  sound  Karamanli  on  the 
subject  of  Italian  intervention.  Now,  Karamanli, 
though  a  traitor,  is  also  a  statesman  of  quite  unusual 
capacity,  a  fine  diplomatist,  a  tactful,  reasonable, 
unambitious  man  of  business,  and,  at  the  same  time, 
a  great  chief  whose  ascendancy  over  practically  all 
the  Arabs  of  Tripolitania  was  unquestioned  until  the 
blundering  bombardment  of  the  Italians  and  the 
landing  of  General  Caneva  deprived  him  of  all  his 
followers  save  a  few  personal  servants,  one  son,  and 
a  group  of  discredited  ex-chiefs.  In  answer  to  Consul 
Grande,  Karamanli  declared  that  he  was  willing  to 
act  the  puppet-part  which  the  Italians  wished  him 
to  play.    To  quote  Consul  Grande's  letter  : 

"  Sid  Hassuna  Karamanli  showed  himself  well 
disposed  to  help  in  the  Italian  occupation,  since 
he  is  convinced  that  if  we  do  not  occupy 
Tripolitania  some  other  Power  will.  He  says  that 
he  can  dispose  of  all  the  strength  of  the  mountain 
population  since  he  enjoys  their  sympathy.  He 
would  accept  a  form  of  government  similar  to 
that  of  Tunisia.  This  arrangement  would,  he  says, 
prevent  any  resistance  on  the  part  of  the  Arabs 
and  would  pacify  the  country.  He  does  not  deny 
that  Turkey  will  fight,  but  he  thinks  that  she  can 
do  nothing  serious  if  she  is  not  supported  by  the 
Arabs." 

Early  in  last  year  Italy  intimated  to  Karamanli 
that  she  was  ready  to  act,   and  the  Prince  again 


HASSUNA   KARAMANLI  301 

insisted,  I  presume,  on  the  necessity  of  doing  the 
deed  gradually,  on  the  terrible  consequences  which 
would  result  if  the  Italians  simply  bombarded  the 
towns  on  the  coast-line,  filled  them  with  soldiers, 
and  frankly  annexed  the  whole  vilayet  in  the  name 
of  King  Victor  Emmanuel.  He  undoubtedly  pointed 
out  that,  in  that  case,  the  whole  Arab  population 
would  join  the  Turks  and  wage  war  against  the 
invaders  until  either  they  or  the  Italians  were  ex- 
terminated. He  assured  them  that  if  they  blundered 
into  the  country  as  "  the  heirs  of  ancient  Rome,"  the 
members  of  his  own  family  would  fight  in  the  ranks  of 
the  Osmanli,  and  that  probably  not  a  dozen  Moham- 
medans in  the  country  (besides  himself)  would  be 
found  on  the  Italian  side.  But  the  Napoleonic  Galli, 
the  Bismarckian  Giolitti,  refused  to  listen  to  him. 
They  preferred  the  slapdash  method,  the  bull-in-a- 
china-shop  manner.  It  is  said  that  Giolitti  intended 
to  make  Victor  Emmanuel  Emperor  of  Italy  as 
Bismarck  made  King  William  I  of  Prussia  Emperor 
of  Germany  at  Versailles,  and  he  could  hardly  do  so 
if  there  was  anything  veiled  or  indirect  about  the 
Italian  conquest  of  Tripolitania. 

Besides,  the  jingo  Press  was  yelping  at  his  heels. 
The  newspapers  wanted  la  guerra  ad  oltranza.  They 
would  not  have  a  protectorate  on  any  terms.  Ignorant 
of  the  importance  which  the  management  of  despots 
plays  in  the  theory  and  practice  of  modern  Im- 
perialism, they  refused  to  maintain  any  native  despot 
for  the  purpose  of  giving  their  crude  aggression  a 
show  of  legality  and  right.  They  did  not  even  stop 
to  ask  themselves  how  they  could  manage  about  the 
franchise  in  case  Tripoli  was  declared  to  be  as  much 
a  part  of  Italy  as  the  Roman  Campagna.  So  far, 
this  is  surely  a  case  of  greediness  grasping  too  much 


302        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

and  getting  next  to  nothing.  That  pagan  people, 
the  Japanese,  conducted  the  absorption  of  Korea 
with  infinitely  more  tact,  while  their  diplomatic 
correspondence  with  Russia,  which  ended  in  an 
ultimatum,  makes  the  tactless  and  ungainly  notes 
which  Signor  Giolitti  sent  to  the  Sublime  Porte  look 
like  the  immature  scrawls  of  a  barbaric  chief. 

Consequently  Hassuna  Karamanli,  with  all  his 
long  experience  of  the  country  and  all  his  intimate 
knowledge  of  his  own  people,  was  overborne  by  men 
who  did  not  know  the  difference  between  an  Arab  and 
a  Berber  ;  and  the  fatal  expedition  was  decided  upon. 
The  Italians  thought  that  Karamanli  was  playing 
for  his  own  hand.  He  wanted  to  be  Bey  like  the  Bey 
of  Tunis,  and  in  order  to  attain  to  that  ridiculous 
eminence  he  tried  to  frighten  them,  "  the  descendants 
of  the  Scipios,"  with  cock-and-bull  stories  of  Arab 
ferocity.  This  smallness  and  greediness,  this  want 
of  a  large,  generous  outlook,  is  characteristic  of  the 
Giolitti  Ministry.  They  may  always  be  confidently 
relied  upon  to  do  the  wrong  thing.  I  would  not 
trust  them  with  the  handling  of  a  tramway  strike, 
much  less  with  the  tactful  settlement  of  a  dangerous 
conflict  which  raises  more  than  one  delicate  question 
and  which  may  ultimately  involve  all  Europe  in  war. 
No  wonder  that  England,  France,  Germany,  and 
Austria-Hungary  wait  with  the  most  intense  anxiety 
to  see  what  these  schoolboy  statesmen  are  going  to  do 
next. 

To  make  the  defeat  of  the  Prince  all  the  more  galling, 
the  Italians  spoke  sorrowfully  of  his  wrongs  and  threw 
out  a  hint  that  they  were  there  to  avenge  them.  In 
the  congenial  columns  of  the  "  New  York  American," 
Gabriele  d'  Annunzio  wept  tears  of  blood  for  la 
dinastia    dei    Caramanli    hrutalmente    spodestata    dai 


HASSUNA   KARAMANLI  303 

iurchi  e  il  modo  come  il  Caramanli  allora  dominante  fu 
atiratto  sulla  nave  ammiraglia  turca,  legato,  portato  a 
Costantinopoli,  dove  subi  la  morte  misteriosa  della 
tradizione  ottomana. 

"  A  profound,  incessant  gleam  burned  in  the  eyes 
of  the  last  Karamanli,"  says  an  Italian  writer, 
describing  the  scene  of  the  formal  submission  in  the 
castle  after  Admiral  Ricci's  landing.  "  His  vendetta 
on  the  Turkish  usurper  was  at  last  finished." 

Yes,  under  the  Turks  even,  he  was  a  Prince  and 
a  Pasha  by  whose  beard  nearly  a  million  Arabs  swore. 
The  Italians  made  him  Vice-Governor  of  Tripoli 
town  !  ^  Thus  were  avenged  the  secular  wrongs  of 
the  Karamanli ! 

So  the  invaders  had  things  their  own  way;  and 
as  Hassuna  Pasha  was  in  the  same  boat  with  them,  he 
had  to  submit.  But  when  he  made  submission  to 
Admiral  Borea-Ricci  in  the  name  of  all  the  Arabs, 
he  was  depressed  and  despondent,  for  he  knew 
very  well  that  he  only  spoke  for  himself.  To  the 
surprise  of  the  Admiral,  he  turned  to  him  and  said, 
"  I  hope  you  will  spare  the  lives  of  my  people." 
He  trusted  that  the  Italians  would  assure  to  the 
Arabs  respect  for  their  religion,  their  women,  their 
property.  When  interviewed  by  correspondents 
innumerable,  he  repeated,  sadly,  the  same  phrase 
about  wanting  the  lives  at  least  of  his  people  to  be 
spared.  Journalists  asked  him  about  the  resources 
of  the  country,  the  minerals  hidden  in  the  mountains, 
the  possibilities  of  a  Klondike  or  a  Johannesburg. 
Prince  Hassuna  sadly  shook  his  head  and  said  that 
the  country  only  wanted  peace,  that  the  Arabs  only 

^  He  is  afterwards  referred  to  frequently,  however,  as  the  Mayor.  It 
does  not  seem  to  be  quite  certain  what  sort  of  a  tenth-rate  honorary 
position  the  unfortunate  man  held,  but  officially  he  was  Vice-Governor, 
at  least  in  the  beginning. 


804         ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

wanted  respect  for  their  religion,  their  women,  their 
property. 

"  Don't  you  think  that  the  Italians  will  be  well 
received  by  the  Arab  population  of  the  interior  ?  " 
they  asked. 

"  Provided  that  the  Italians  respect  the  families 
and  the  religion  of  the  people,"  answered  Karamanli 
sadly,  unable  evidently  to  get  away  from  this  aspect 
of  the  question. 

"  Won't  Your  Excellency  come  forward  to  accept 
the  leadership,  the  representation,  so  to  speak,  of 
the  Arab  people — if  Italy  invites  you  to  do  so  ?  " 
they  tactlessly  asked. 

"  I  wish  to  keep  entirely  apart,"  answered  the 
Prince.  "  My  only  desire  is  for  the  peace  and  tran- 
quillity of  my  people.  What  Allah  decrees  must  be, 
ma  se  V  acqua  non  si  cheta  la  sabbia  che  c'  e  dentro  non 
precipita.  [But  if  the  water  is  not  at  rest,  the  sand 
in  it  does  not  settle  down  to  the  bottom.]  The  Arabs 
only  want  respect  for  their  religion,  their  women, 
their  property." 

Then  came  the  massacres,  and  Prince  Hassuna 
was  in  bad  odour  immediately.  His  powers  as  Vice- 
Governor,  always  rather  mythical,  were  immediately 
curtailed.  The  Hon.  Deputy  De  Felice  wired  from 
Tripoli  that  "  Per  misure  di  or  dine  generate  i  poteri 
accordati  al  sindaco  della  cittd  sono  stati  limitati  alio 
stretto  necessario  nei  riguardi  esclusivi  degli  usi  locally 
("  For  the  sake  of  the  general  tranquillity,  the  powers 
accorded  to  the  Mayor  of  the  city  have  been  limited 
to  matters  of  strict  necessity  in  exclusive  connection 
with  local  customs.") 

In  other  words,  after  allowing  him  to  reign  with 
sham  brilliancy  for  exactly  twelve  days,  the  Italians 
suddenly  "  busted  "  (to  use  an  Americanism)  their 


HASSUNA   KARAMANLI  305 

puppet  Lord  Mayor,  the  capo  delta  municipalitd  di 
Tripoli  e  capo  riconosciuto  dagli  arabi  della  cittd  e 
delle  campagne  (the  chief  of  the  municipahty  of 
Tripoli  and  recognised  head  of  the  Arabs  of  the  city 
and  of  the  country). 

De  FeHce  added  that  "  the  notables  of  the  city 
apparently  continue  in  favour  of  the  Italian  occu- 
pation." 

The  unfortunate  Mayor  was  made  the  scapegoat 
for  the  sins  of  Italian  officials  who,  having  got  the 
city  into  a  state  of  massacre  and  muddle,  were  now 
anxious  to  blame  somebody  else  for  it.  He  was 
blamed  for  having  tried  to  make  the  Italians  pursue 
a  peaceful  policy  towards  the  Arabs.  "  You  prevented 
us  from  disarming  those  oasis  Bedouins,  and  now, 
thanks  to  your  leniency,  they  have  risen  in  our  rear 
and  wiped  out  two  companies  of  our  best  troops." 
"  You  told  us  the  Arabs  were  on  our  side  and  your 
prophecies  have  all  come  wrong."  "  You  assured 
us  that  we  would  have  no  difficulties  save  with  the 
Turks,  and  now  see  the  mess  in  which  you  have 
landed  us." 

Such  were  the  reproaches  addressed  by  blundering, 
angry,  incompetent  officers  to  il  ultimo  dei  Caramanli 
(the  last  of  the  Karamanlis).  Newspapers  in  Italy 
even  agitated  to  have  his  wretched  salary  reduced — 
the  unfortunate  man  was  getting  a  few  thousand  lire 
a  month  to  keep  up  his  state  as  "  Prince  "  and  as  Lord 
Mayor  of  Tripoli — on  the  ground  that  he  had  not 
carried  out  his  engagements  to  keep  the  natives  quiet. 

Probably  because  he  refused  to  abase  himself  to  the 
last  pitch  of  degradation  by  signing  a  protest  against 
the  "exaggerated"  accounts  of  Italian  atrocities  which 
had  appeared  in  the  foreign  Press,  he  was  actually 
suspected  of  being  in  communication  with  the  Turks, 

X 


306        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

of  being,  in  short,  a  spy,  of  intriguing  with  the  enemy 
through  his  son,  a  Turkish  cavalry  officer,  who  had 
left  the  city  with  Nescia  Bey. 

In  spite  of  all  his  sacrifices,  he  was  suspected. 
During  the  battle  of  Sidi  Messri  I  spoke  with  an 
officer  who  threw  serious  doubts  on  Karamanli's 
loyalty,  and  who  said  that  he  was  probably  betraying 
the  plans  of  the  Italians  to  the  Turks  through  his  son 
the  cavalry  officer  out  in  the  Desert. 

In  all  probability,  the  unfortunate  man  now 
regrets  that  he  ever  helped  the  Italians  to  come  to 
Tripoli.  Save  for  a  younger  son,  and  for  the  members 
of  his  harem,  he  is  alone  in  the  world.  All  the  Arabs 
in  Tripoli  hate  him  as  a  Judas,  and  sooner  or  later  one 
of  them  is  bound  to  put  a  knife  or  bullet  into  him. 
During  the  progress  of  the  massacres  he  was  a 
pathetic  sight  as,  in  obedience  to  peremptory  orders 
from  his  Italian  taskmaster  in  the  Castello,  he 
perambulated  the  streets  of  the  city  accompanied 
by  a  few  Arab  "  notables  "  who  looked  as  bedraggled 
and  dispirited  as  himself.  He  was  supposed  to  be 
out  on  a  vague  and  hopeless  mission  of  calming  the 
people  and  allaying  the  turmoil,  but  he  dared  not 
speak  to  any  Arab.  Had  he  ventured  to  address 
the  lowest  hamal  (porter)  in  the  street,  the  hamal 
would  have  considered  himself  insulted,  would  have 
spat  in  the  face  of  the  traitor  who  had  brought  in 
the  giaour. 

If  an  Arab  bullet  does  not  end  his  days,  this  mock 
"  Prince  "  will  probably  finish  his  picturesque  career 
as  a  suspect  in  some  Italian  fortress.  Bitter,  indeed, 
is  the  bread  of  the  man  who  has  betrayed  his  country. 
Thrice  bitter  is  the  bread  eaten  by  the  "  mnico  delV 
Italia,  Hassuna  Fascia,  ultimo  dei  Karamanli,  prin- 
cipe  della  Tripolitania."     For  he  is  thrice  a  traitor. 


HASSUNA   KARAMANLI  307 

He  has  betrayed  not  only  his  country,  but  also  his 
religion  and  his  race. 

And,  as  if  the  hand  of  Allah  had  smitten  him,  his 
eldest  son  has  been  taken  away  from  him  by  an 
untimely  death.  Early  in  November,  far  away 
amid  the  Gharian  mountains,  this  brave  young 
soldier  was  carried  off  by  fever. 


CHAPTER    IV 

CANEVA   OVER-CAREFUL 

It  is  generally  supposed  that  the  oasis  massacres 
were  the  result  of  a  sudden  rising  of  the  Arab  "  friend- 
lies  "  on  October  23rd.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  they 
were  inevitable  from  the  moment  General  Caneva 
landed. 

The  arrangement  of  the  Italian  line  made  them 
inevitable.  So  did  the  utterly  mistaken  ideas  which 
General  Caneva  had  brought  with  him  from  Rome 
regarding  the  submission  of  the  Arabs. 

In  arranging  his  line  and  in  everything  he  did, 
General  Caneva  erred,  sometimes  by  over-caution, 
sometimes  by  insufficient  caution. 

He  was  over-cautious  when  he  posted  his  soldiers 
shoulder  to  shoulder  in  a  semi-circle  round  the  town, 
one  end  of  the  entrenched  line  reaching  the  sea  west 
of  Tripoli  at  Gargaresh,  the  other  end  reaching  the 
sea  east  of  Tripoli  at  Sharashett.  While  keeping  a 
very  strong  reserve  in  Tripoli,  he  should  have  attacked 
in  detail  the  very  small  parties  of  Arabs  who  harassed 
him  ;  he  should  have  occupied  positions  far  from  the 
town.  But  his  line  was  in  no  place  more  than  two 
miles  from  the  citadel  on  the  water's  edge,  and  at 
night  there  were  no  outposts  in  front  of  this  line, 
so  that  the  Arabs  could  come  up  to  within  forty  yards 
of  the  Italians,  while  the  Turkish  artillery  amused 
itself  for  weeks  and  weeks  by  throwing  shells  into 

308 


CANEVA    OVER-CAREFUL  309 

the  city.  Considering  the  relative  strength  of  the 
two  armies,  this  patience  and  humihty  on  the  part 
of  the  Italian  leader  was  preposterous.  The  Turko- 
Arabs  numbered  1500  men,  with  eight  old  cannon. 
The  Italians  20,000,  with,  at  the  end  of  October, 
seven  field  -  batteries,  nine  mountain -batteries,  ten 
machine-guns,  not  to  mention  half-a-dozen  men-o'-war 
and  half-a-dozen  aeroplanes.  Armed  with  modern 
rifles,  any  body  of  soldiers  can  keep  at  bay  a  force 
three  times  as  great  as  itself  ;  but  here  we  find  an 
entrenched  army  compelled  to  retreat  by  an  enemy 
less  than  one-tenth  as  numerous. 

The  retreat  took  place  on  October  28th.  It  was 
probably  due  to  over-carefulness,  to  General  Caneva's 
anxiety  not  to  run  the  risk  of  another  Adowa,  of  a 
disaster  which  might  lead  even  to  the  overthrow  of 
the  dynasty  at  home.  But  in  war  this  sort  of  over- 
carefulness  is  nearly  always  fatal.  It  was  extremely 
near  being  fatal  in  the  case  of  the  Italians,  for  it  caused 
great  jubilation  among  the  Arabs,  who  considered 
that  they  had  gained  a  victory.  Meanwhile  the 
Arabs  in  the  city  were  kept  in  a  constant  state  of 
excitement  by  hearing,  continually  and  distinctly, 
the  crackle  of  their  kinsmen's  rifles  in  the  Desert,  by 
seeing  Turkish  shells  strike  General  Caneva's  house, 
by  seeing  Arab  rifle-balls  kill  soldiers  in  the  market- 
place and  in  front  of  the  American  Consulate. 

I  regret  that  I  must  add  that  General  Caneva  was 
perhaps  rather  too  careful  of  his  own  person.     He 

lived  in  the  old  citadel  of  Charles  the  Fifth  and  was 

« 

never  visible.  He  never  went  about  among  the 
troops.  He  never  came  into  personal  contact  with 
the  bulk  of  his  officers. 

Especially  after  he  had  become  convinced  that 
the  friendly  Arabs  were  really  hostile,  General  Caneva 


310        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

manifested  such  a  frenzy,  as  I  can  only  call  it,  for 
protecting  his  own  person  that  the  Arabs,  accustomed 
to  look  for  personal  bravery  above  all  things  in  their 
own  leaders,  were  filled  with  contempt,  while  the 
Italian  soldiers  and  officers  were  not  much  edified. 

At  first  he  seemed  to  be  afraid  to  come  ashore  at 
all,  and  remained,  it  is  said,  in  a  transport.  Towards 
the  end  of  October  he  did  venture  to  come  ashore,  but 
it  was  whispered  that  he  used  to  go  back  to  his  trans- 
port at  night,  so  that  he  might  have  a  good  start 
with  the  news  in  case  the  Arabs  rushed  the  town  in 
the  darkness.  It  looked  as  if  he  were  really  a  "  New 
York  Herald  "  correspondent,  after  all,  and  wanted 
to  reach  Malta  first  with  his  cable  in  case  anything 
happened. 

Even  when  ashore,  he  remained  hidden  all  day 
somewhere  in  the  huge  grey  citadel  on  the  edge  of 
the  sea.  But  as  soon  as  shooting  began  at  the  out- 
posts hurried  preparations  were  made  to  put  this 
citadel  in  a  state  of  defence.  The  glass  in  the  windows 
was  broken  so  that  the  soldiers  could  more  easily 
fire  through.  The  castello  was  surrounded  with 
troops,  lines  of  sand-bags  were  laid  in  the  open 
ground-floor  windows,  as  well  as  in  the  gateways 
and  the  doorways  of  the  citadel ;  and,  behind  those 
bags,  soldiers  lay  prone  on  the  ground  as  if  they  were 
in  the  firing-line.  The  flat  roofs  were  crowded  with 
troops,  also  prone,  their  fingers  on  the  trigger.  The 
courtyards  bristled  with  bayonets.  The  flat  roofs 
of  all  the  neighbouring  houses  were  grey  with  soldiery. 
The  steam-launch  got  up  steam,  so  that  if  the  worst 
came  to  the  worst  the  Generalissimo  might  be  able 
to  make  a  "  bolt." 

Those  preparations  for  a  last  stand  at  the  front 
door  of  the  Governor's  house  (while  His  Excellency 


CANEVA   OVER-CAREFUL  311 

escaped  by  the  back  door)  caused  an  extremely  bad 
impression  among  the  Arabs  as  well  as  among  the 
Italian  soldiers. 

The  only  reason  the  Arabs  could  see  for  all  this 
preparation  was  General  Caneva's  certainty  that  the 
Desert  Arabs  would  be  in  the  city  within  a  few 
moments,  and  his  desire  to  have  time  to  get  off  in 
his  steam-launch  before  they  rushed  the  citadel.  Such 
extreme  precautions  on  the  part  of  a  Commander- 
in-chief  have  seldom  been  seen  in  war  since  the  days 
when  the  Byzantine  Emperors  (who  also  claimed 
to  be  "  the  heirs  of  ancient  Rome  ")  sent  out  their 
eunuchs  in  charge  of  armies.  General  Caneva's 
explanation  would  probably  be  that,  if  he  exposed 
himself  freely  in  the  streets,  his  death  at  the  hand  of 
a  fanatical  Mohammedan  would  be  almost  certain, 
and  that  enough  fire-arms  remained  among  the  town 
Arabs  to  make  it  possible  for  them  to  rush  the  citadel 
in  case  it  were  not  properly  guarded.  But  he  himself 
was  to  blame  for  not  having  made  it  his  first  duty, 
as  soon  as  he  landed,  to  seize  every  rifle  and  every 
cartridge  in  the  town.  Proclamations  were  not 
enough.  There  should  have  been  a  house-to-house 
search,  and  everything  in  the  shape  of  a  fire-arm 
should  have  been  seized.  That  done.  General  Caneva 
could  have  omitted  those  extravagant  preparations 
for  the  defence  of  his  own  residence,  which  rendered 
him  an  object  of  ridicule  to  the  whole  native  popu- 
lation, and  which  must  have  seriously  damped  the 
spirits  of  his  troops. 

Those  troops  had  never  been  in  the  best  of  humour 
since  the  day  they  landed,  and,  in  order  to  cheer 
them  up,  a  military  band  used  to  perform  regularly 
every  evening  at  the  Bumeliana  well.  But  unfortu- 
nately the  Turks  nearly  landed  a  shell  one  day  in 


812        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

the  big  drum,  and  never  after  that  did  the  band  play 
at  Bumeliana  to  cheer  up  the  soldiers.  It  played 
near  the  castello  to  cheer  up  General  Caneva.  It  is 
to  Herr  von  Gottberg  that  I  am  indebted  for  this 
instructive  story. 

To  make  things  worse,  the  bad  example  of  this 
invisible  Generalissimo  was  imitated  by  all  the 
higher  officers.  The  Division  Commander  had 
fortified  himself  in  a  house  nearly  opposite  that  of 
the  Commander-in-chief,  and  never  went  to  the 
front  save  as  a  guest,  a  rare  visitor.  During  the 
pogroms  at  the  end  of  October  no  officer  of  the  rank 
of  captain,  or  of  any  rank  above  that,  was  to  be  seen 
with  the  troops.  Yet  if  ever  there  was  a  time  when 
the  elder  officers  should  have  been  on  the  spot  in 
order  to  keep  the  younger  officers  as  well  as  the  men 
under  proper  control,  it  was  then.  I  know  that  I 
have  made  this  remark  several  times  already,  but  I 
shall  probably  make  it  again,  for  it  cannot  be  repeated 
too  often. 


CHAPTER    V 

CANEVA'S   MISTAKE   ABOUT  THE  '^  SUBMISSION " 
OF   THE   ARABS 

I  HAVE  tried  to  show  how  General  Caneva  erred  by 
over-carefulness.  Now,  he  is  generally  supposed  to 
be  a  very  prudent  and  knowing  commander,  but, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  his  carelessness  and  his  child-like 
ignorance  in  some  directions  were  astonishing.  In 
some  things  he  displayed  quite  a  touching  simplicity. 

His  initial  mistake  was  in  thinking  that  the  Arabs 
had  submitted.  I  shall  deal  with  this  mistake  at  some 
length,  as  it  has  a  direct  bearing  on  the  massacres, 
for  naturally  there  would  have  been  no  accusations 
of  treachery  if  the  Italians  had  not  been  convinced 
that  the  Arabs  had  sworn  allegiance  to  them. 

To  find  the  origin  of  this  mistaken  optimism  we 
must  go  back  a  long  way.  Four  months  before  the 
war,  just  about  the  time  that  the  Italian  Minister  for 
Foreign  Affairs  publicly  declared  that  there  were  no 
difficulties  between  the  Italian  Government  and  the 
Porte,  the  Italian  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs  unloosed 
a  horde  of  spies  and  jingoes  on  Tripolitania.  Those 
men  took  all  conceivable  forms.  Some  of  them  were 
postal  officials  ;  some  of  them  were  newspaper  cor- 
respondents ;  but  all  of  them  were  violent  supporters 
of  the  new  policy  of  Nazionalismo.  Thus,  long 
before  the  rupture,  Signor  Enrico  Corradini,  one  of 
the  founders  of  the  Nationalist  school,  travelled  all 

313 


314        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

over  Tripolitania  and  afterwards  pointed  out  in  a  book, 
"  L'Ora  di  Tripoli,"  how  useful  this  Turkish  vilayet 
might  be  made  to  Italy,  how  it  would  employ  Italian 
emigrants,  how  it  would  be  prosperous  like  Tunis, 
how  even  its  deserts  could  be  made  to  blossom  like 
the  rose.  Signor  Giuseppe  Bevione,  another  violent 
Nationalist,  also  visited  Tripolitania  in  the  spring 
of  1911.  I  do  not  say  that  those  two  gentlemen  were 
actually  in  the  employ  of  the  Italian  Foreign  Office, 
but  their  reports  must  have  been  read  at  Rome,  and 
their  presence,  as  well  as  that  of  many  other  Italian 
publicists  in  Tripoli,  some  months  before  Signor 
Giolitti  had  discovered  that  he  had  any  grievance 
there  at  all,  is  rather  significant. 

But  the  leading  agents  of  the  Italian  Government 
in  ante-bellum  Tripoli  were  Vice-Consul  Galli  and 
Captain  Verri.  The  former  was  a  small,  Napoleonic- 
looking  Florentine  ;  the  latter  a  long,  thin,  military 
man.  It  is  a  significant  indication  of  the  direction 
taken  by  Italy's  aspirations  that  both  these  men 
should  have  been  previously  employed  in  Italia 
irredenta,  which,  as  is  well  known,  the  Italian  Nation- 
alists claim  as  part  of  Italy. 

I  hope  that  Signor  Galli's  reports  from  Italia 
irredenta^  were  more  in  conformity  with  the  facts  than 
were  his  reports  from  Tripolitania,  for  in  the  latter 
reports  he  seems  to  have  given  Rome  the  idea  that 
the  Arabs  were  all  anti-Turk  and  would  welcome 
the  Italians  with  open  arms. 

Such  mistakes  are  perpetually  made,  of  course,  by 

^  The  excellent  Tyrolese  troops  of  Austria-Hungary  would  reach 
Venice  in  a  couple  of  days  after  the  outbreak  of  an  Italo-Austrian 
war.  During  a  walking-tour  in  the  Dolomite  Alps  a  few  years  ago,  I 
was  enormously  impressed  by  the  efficiency  of  the  Austro-Hungarian 
soldiers  in  the  South-east  Tyrol.  But  on  the  other  side  of  the  frontier 
the  Italian  garrisons  live  on  those  vain  delusions  of  their  prowess  which 
have  cost  them  much  in  TripoHtania. 


CANEVA'S    MISTAKE  315 

agents  who  are  sent  out  in  this  way — even  by  Enghsh 
agents.  Those  agents  are  so  anxious  to  make  their 
names  historical  that  they  simply  cannot  say  to  their 
Government  :  "  It  is  better  to  wait."  They  see  a 
favourable  and  extraordinary  conjunction  of  cir- 
cumstances which  may  never  occur  again,  and 
in  their  optimism,  their  enthusiasm,  their  intense 
desire  that  their  Government  should  act  at  once, 
their  judgment  becomes  hopelessly  warped,  they 
overlook  the  difficulties,  exaggerate  the  facilities, 
persuade  themselves  that  the  "  downtrodden  "  natives 
will  welcome  the  invaders.  And  they  do  this  all  the 
more  readily  when  they  know  that  this  is  the  only 
kind  of  report  which  their  Government  wants,  that 
any  other  kind  of  report  would  only  lead  to  their 
recall  and  disgrace. 

This  danger  was  all  the  greater  in  the  case  of 
Consul  Galli,  since  he  is  a  man  of  obstinate,  over- 
bearing, and  self-sufficient  character,  and  a  fanatical 
Nationalist.  To  give  the  reader  an  idea  of  his  char- 
acter, I  need  only  mention  the  fact  that  after  the  troops 
had  landed  and  he  himself  had  been  made  head  of 
the  Civil  Government,  he  suddenly  ceased  to  under- 
stand any  language  but  Italian.  Only  a  day  earlier 
he  would  condescend  to  converse  with  the  corre- 
spondents in  French  or  even  in  a  sort  of  English  ; 
but  as  Bismarck,  though  a  good  linguist,  insisted, 
after  Sedan,  on  speaking  only  German  on  official 
occasions,  so  Consul  Galli  insisted  on  speaking  only 
Italian  on  account  of  Admiral  Faravelli's  great 
victory  over  a  few  antiquated  Turkish  forts  on 
October  3rd. 

But  I  am  anticipating.  Before  the  war  Galli 
had  succeeded  in  gathering  around  him  a  number 
of  Arabs  who   said  that  they  were  chiefs   or   had 


316        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

been  chiefs.  One  or  two  of  them  may  have  been 
telHng  the  truth,  but  a  more  extensive  experience 
of  Northern  Africa  would  have  taught  the  Consul 
that,  though  it  is  easy  to  get  an  Arab  to  sell  his 
country,  it  is  quite  another  matter  to  make  him 
"  deliver  the  goods." 

The  bulk  of  these  renegades  were  so  well  broken 
in,  however,  that  Galli  could  trot  them  out  like  a 
music-hall  troupe  at  every  function  which  took 
place  in  Tripoli  after  the  Italian  landing.  Signor 
Gain's  Arab  marionettes  appeared  in  their  long 
white  robes  and  performed  their  celebrated  kow-tow 
when  Commander  Cagni  entered  the  city.  Signor 
Galli's  supers  turned  up  promptly  when  General 
Caneva  took  over  the  command.  Their  presence 
added  a  graceful  Oriental  touch  to  Italian  reunions ; 
and  they  always  put  in  an  appearance  so  quickly 
that  it  seemed  as  if  the  Consul  kept  them  housed 
somewhere  behind  his  Consulate,  had  them  on  call, 
so  to  speak,  and  could  summon  them  at  any  moment 
by  merely  pressing  an  electric  button.  Even  when 
their  innocent  countrymen  were  slaughtered  by 
thousands  in  the  oasis  towards  the  end  of  October, 
this  faithful  Old  Guard  turned  up  at  Galli's  bidding 
and  signed  a  protest  against  the  accounts  of  these 
massacres  that  were  published  in  the  foreign  papers. 
Could  sycophancy  go  further  than  that  ? 

Chief  among  these  men  was  Prince  Hassuna 
Pasha,  the  last  representative  of  the  great  Kara- 
manli  family  which  had  once  taken  Tripoli  from  the 
Turks  and  ruled  it  as  an  independent  State  until 
about  forty  years  ago,  when  the  Turks  retook  it. 
Hassuna  Pasha,  of  whom  I  have  already  spoken 
in  Chapter  III,  Part  IV,  is  a  tall,  black-bearded 
man  of  ample  presence.     His  features  are  regular, 


CANEVA'S   MISTAKE  317 

his  appearance  is  striking.  He  dresses  well  in  Euro- 
pean style,  with  a  frock-coat,  but  with  a  fez  instead 
of  a  tall  hat.  For  a  long  time  past  he  had  been 
exceedingly  anxious  to  sell  his  country.  I  have 
already  shown  that  in  1890  he  was  in  communication 
with  Crispi  with  the  object  of  facilitating  the  ac- 
quisition of  Tripolitania  by  the  Italians.  Ever  since 
that  time  he  has  probably  been  in  receipt  of  a  salary 
from  Rome. 

For  a  long  time  before  the  war  Karamanli  had 
been  in  close  communication  with  Galli,  but  so  far 
from  having  any  right  to  speak,  as  he  did,  for  all 
the  Arabs  of  Tripolitania,  he  could  not  act  as  spokes- 
man for  the  members  of  his  own  family — in  so  far, 
at  least,  as  their  direct  transference  of  allegiance 
from  the  Khalifa  to  the  King  of  Italy  was  concerned. 
He  has  an  only  son  who  was  last  October  in  the 
Desert  at  the  head  of  the  Turkish  Cavalry.  A  few 
days  before  I  left  Tripoli  the  father  sent  a  message 
to  his  son  asking  him  to  come  back,  swear  allegiance 
to  the  invaders,  accept  wealth  and  honour  at  their 
hands.  The  son's  answer  was  worthy  of  an  ancient 
Roman.  He  said,  "  Yes,  I  will  soon  come  back,  but 
it  will  be  at  the  head  of  my  Turkish  horsemen ;  and, 
when  I  come,  you  will  be  the  first  man  I  shall  hang." 

This,  then,  was  one  of  the  principal  Arab  sup- 
porters of  Consul  Galli.  Even  after  the  Arab 
"  revolt "  at  Sharashett  the  Consul  continued  to 
be  invincibly  optimistic.  He  was  recalled  to  Rome 
to  give  an  account  of  the  situation,  and  the  head- 
line "  Uottimismo  del  Console  Galli,''  which  appeared 
in  all  the  Italian  papers  at  that  time,  indicates  his 
confidence  in  the  Arabs.  "  Le  notizie  riferite  dal 
cav.  Galli  sono  confortevolissime  specie  per  quel  eke 
riguarda    la    fedelta    della    popolazione    araba    della 


818        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

dud  di  Tripoli."  (The  news  brought  back  by  Consul 
Galli  is  most  comforting,  especially  as  regards  the 
fidelity  of  the  Arab  population  of  the  city  of  Tripoli.) 

From  this  it  will  be  seen  that  the  Consul,  once  so 
ready  to  swear  that  all  the  Tripolitan  Arabs  would 
greet  the  Italian  invaders  as  long-lost  brothers, 
now  confined  himself  to  vouching  for  the  Arabs  of 
Tripoli  city.  He  was  certainly  on  the  safe  side  now, 
for  there  are  not  many  real  Arabs  in  Tripoli  city, 
the  population  being  mostly  composed  of  Jews, 
Maltese,  Greeks,  Levantines,  Syrians,  and  of  other 
mixed  and  parasitical  races  such  as  we  find  clinging 
everywhere  to  the  fringe  of  the  Ottoman  Empire, 
besides  a  large  collection  of  nondescripts  of  no  definite 
nationality. 

When  asked  to  account  for  the  oasis  revolt,  Consul 
Galli  airily  explained  to  the  Rome  correspondent 
of  the  "  Corriere  della  Sera "  that  it  was  "  the 
result  of  intrigues  and  menaces  on  the  part  of  the 
Turks,  who  made  the  Arabs  believe  that  a  strong 
Ottoman  army  was  about  to  reoccupy  Tripoli." 

The  Consul  then  switched  off  the  conversation 
to  Derna,  where  he  declared  that  "  the  soldiers  live 
in  common  with  the  Arabs,  and  where  both  are  in 
cordial  solidarity  against  the  Turks." 

In  view  of  the  dreadful  and  almost  continuous 
fighting  that  has  since  taken  place  at  Derna,  we  can 
understand  why  Consul  Galli  was  recalled  in  disgrace 
from  Tripoli.  A  political  prophet  of  this  kind  is  a 
perilous  possession  for  any  country. 

But  Consul  Galli  was  not  the  only  false  prophet. 
Captain  Verri,  a  military  spy  Avho  came  to  Tripoli 
in  disguise  before  the  bombardment,  also  prophesied 
smooth  things.  He  is  said  to  have  been  so  upset 
by    the   brutal    way    in    which    events    falsified    his 


CANEVA'S  MISTAKE  319 

predictions  that,  on  October  26th,  he  committed 
suicide  in  the  Desert  just  outside  the  Itahan  trenches. 
His  friends  maintain,  it  is  true,  that  it  was  a  Turkish 
bullet  that  killed  him.  I  have  already  described 
the  incident. 

Thus  the  agents  of  Italy  in  Tripolitania  were 
unanimous  in  declaring  that  the  campaign  would 
be  a  walk-over,  a  "  passeggiata  militare."  A  Socialist 
deputy  even  said  that  it  would  not  cost  a  penny 
nor  the  life  of  a  single  soldier. 

I  am  sorry  to  have  to  add  that  the  Press  was 
largely  responsible  for  this  wrong  impression.  I 
might  even  say  that  the  long  and  tenacious  campaign 
for  the  taking  of  Tripoli  which  was  conducted  by 
the  Italian  daily  papers,  had  a  great  deal  to  do 
with  the  hounding  on  of  this  timid  and  unmilitary 
people  into  war.  The  Chauvinism  of  the  daily  Press 
is  in  all  countries  a  new  danger  which  the  nations 
must  seriously  take  into  account,  and  the  danger  is 
particularly  great  in  Italy  owing  to  the  fact  that  the 
leading  journalists  in  that  country  are  litter  at  i  and 
impressionists  who  are  peculiarly  irresponsible,  who  are 
peculiarly  out  of  touch  with  realities.  These  writers  had 
constantly  before  them  the  name  of  imperial  Rome. 
They  could  not,  under  the  circumstances,  have  had 
a  worse  inspiration.  Italy  should  try  to  imitate 
the  excellent  example  of  some  practical,  progressive, 
and  peaceful  country  like  modern  Denmark,  not 
the  sinister  example  of  ancient  Rome.  She  should 
drop  the  delusion  about  making  colonial  empires, 
and  go  in  for  making  butter.  The  future  belongs 
to  the  nations  of  farmers  and  shopkeepers. 

Even  on  the  question  of  the  Arab  attitude  and 
of  the  strategical  plans  which  should  be  followed, 
the    Italians   seem   to   have   been   considerably   in- 


320        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

fluenced  by  the  Press.  They  were  confirmed  in  their 
opinion  that  the  Arabs  were  disgusted  with  Turkish 
rule  and  would  welcome  the  Italians  among  them. 
Able  journalists  detected  a  certain  indifference  and 
impassibility  on  the  faces  of  the  Arabs  whenever 
Turkey  was  mentioned,  and,  hastily  translating  this 
into  words,  they  asserted  that  Tripolitania  was 
sick  to  death  of  Ottoman  oppression.  They  even 
declared  that  the  Senussi  would  welcome  with  open 
arms  the  soldiers  of  Italy. 

Misled  by  these  statements,  which  seemed  to 
confirm  the  confidential  reports  of  its  most  trusted 
secret  agents,  the  Italian  Government  had  been  won 
over  absolutely  to  the  "  passeggiata  militare  "  view. 
It  reasoned  in  this  way :  The  Turks  have  in  Tripoli 
only  four  regiments  of  regular  Infantry  whom  they 
can  reinforce  with  a  certain  number  of  redifs,  several 
squadrons  of  cavalry,  and  a  few  batteries  of  artillery. 
In  all,  they  cannot  place  more  than  15,000  soldiers  in 
the  field  against  us.  We,  on  the  other  hand,  can  at 
once  send  against  them  an  army  corps  of  about 
40,000  men,  which  will  be  amply  sufficient  to  beat 
an  army  that  cannot  be  reinforced,  owing  to  our 
blockade  of  the  coast. 

But  the  gravest  question  of  all — the  friendship 
or  neutrality  of  the  Arabs — was  left  out  of  account 
not  only  by  the  journalists,  but  even  by  the  Govern- 
ment and  the  leaders  of  the  army. 

The  unexpected  Arab  rising  against  the  in- 
vaders was  therefore  the  iceberg  on  which  the 
Italians  suffered  shipwreck.  I  must  admit,  how- 
ever, that  in  her  delusions  on  the  subject  of  the 
Arabs,  Italy  was  encouraged,  to  some  extent, 
by  history — at  any  rate,  by  the  old  histories  which 
the  Chauvinist  Italian  litterati  seem  to  have  read. 


CANEVA'S  MISTAKE  321 

The  Arabs  have  ever  oscillated  between  two  secular 
hates,  their  hate  of  the  Turks  and  their  hate  of  the 
Infidel.  They  have  frequently  fought  against  the 
Turks  with  as  much  fanaticism  as  they  fight  against 
Europeans.  It  was  owing  to  his  Arab  soldiery  that 
Mehmed  Ali  was  able,  in  the  first  half  of  the  last 
century,  to  beat  the  armies  of  the  Sultan  of  Stamboul 
and  to  place  Turkey  in  great  danger.  The  Arabs  in 
the  Yemen  have  been  fighting  ever  since  against 
the  soldiers  of  the  Padishah.  But  it  was  not  by 
men  of  Consul  Galli's  stamp  that  the  proud  Arab 
skeikhs  could  be  won  over.  Besides,  the  Italians 
were  not  much  respected  by  the  Arabs.  There  were 
in  Tripolitania  too  many  cheap  labourers  of  Italian 
nationality.  This  may  seem,  by  the  way,  to  be  a 
cheap  sneer  on  my  part,  but  it  is  a  profound  truth 
with  a  most  important  bearing  on  the  present  con- 
flict. The  fact  that  labourers  from  Sicily  worked  in 
Tripolitania  for  the  same  wages  as  an  Arab  made  the 
Arabs  consider  all  Italians  as  coolies,  as  people  who 
could  not  be  regarded  as  Europeans  at  all,  and  who 
were  on  quite  a  different  plane  from  the  other  nations 
north  of  the  Mediterranean.  All  along  the  northern 
and  eastern  coasts  of  Africa  it  is  the  same  story  :  the 
natives  regard  the  Italians  as  not  quite  civilised. 
This  is,  of  course,  a  gross  libel  on  a  great  race,  but  it 
would  be  an  error  in  the  journalist  or  the  historian  to 
let  a  false  sense  of  squeamishness  prevent  him  from 
stating  it. 

"  There  is  another  very  strong  motive,"  says 
a  correspondent  of  "  The  Times "  (April  11th), 
"  which  incites  the  Arab  to  regard  an  Italian  oc- 
cupation of  Tripoli  with  disfavour  ;  it  is  the  wide- 
spread belief  that  Italy  is  poor.     An  Italian  here 


822        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

or  in  Tunis  will  work  for  as  little  as  an  Arab.  The 
Arab  is  no  fool  in  what  concerns  himself  personally. 
He  thinks  that  a  people  as  poor  as  he  believes  his 
would-be  conquerors  to  be  would  not  respect  his 
title  to  his  small  possessions,  and  would  create  a 
killing  competition  for  him  in  all  those  occupations 
wherein  at  present  he  gains  a  meagre  existence.  .  .  . 
The  leaflets  dropped  by  the  Italians  from  their 
aeroplanes  stating  .  .  .  that  Italy  was  the  greatest, 
the  strongest,  and  the  richest  power  in  Europe  .  .  . 
are  laughed  at.  Among  other  beliefs  the  Arabs 
hold  is  one  that  the  Italians  themselves  are  far 
behind  the  rest  of  Europe,  and  many  of  them 
quite  as  much  in  need  of  civilisation  and  instruc- 
tion as  the  Tripolitans.  Whether  public  opinion 
in  Tripoli  has  been  cleverly  cultivated  by  the 
astute  Turks,  or  whether  it  results  from  prejudiced 
imagination  and  chance,  it  is  not  worth  while  to 
discuss.  For  Turkish  interests  it  could  not  have 
been  better  formed  by  the  cleverest  and  best 
organised  department  in  the  world.  It  has  arrayed 
the  people  like  one  man  against  the  invaders,  and 
quadrupled  Italy's  difficulties." 

This  question  of  Italian  cheap  labour  certainly 
makes  Italy's  position  in  Tripolitania  difficult. 
Wherever  Europeans  rule  Asiatics  it  is  rather  through 
prestige  than  through  force,  and  prestige  is  lost  as 
soon  as  the  white  Sahib  is  found  sweeping  the  streets 
alongside  the  coolie.  Spain,  a  poor  country,  had 
constant  difficulties  in  Cuba  and  the  Philippines 
where  America,  richer  though  with  a  smaller  army, 
has  had  no  trouble.  Portugal  has  perpetual  turmoils 
in  her  colonies.  England  and  France  have  practically 
no  difficulty  with  the  vast  African  and  Asiatic  popu- 


CANEVA'S   MISTAKE  323 

lations  which  they  rule,  because  these  two  countries 
are  wealthy  and  because  their  white  emigrants  do  not 
compete  with  the  manual  labourers  of  the  conquered 
territories.  The  great  distance  at  which  India  and 
Indo-China  lie  from  the  countries  which  dominate 
them  is  a  positive  advantage  to  these  paramount 
Powers,  surrounding,  as  it  does,  with  a  sense  of 
mystery  the  white  stranger  from  over  the  sea.  And 
even  in  Tunis  and  Algeria  the  French  are  a  class 
apart  from  the  cheap  Arab  and  Italian  labour  which 
does  all  the  rough  work.  Even  the  Turks  did  not 
compete  with  the  Tripolitans  to  any  large  extent  in 
manual  and  casual  labour.  The  only  Turks  in 
Tripolitania  were  functionaries  and  soldiers. 

With  Italy  it  will  be  entirely  different,  and  one  of 
the  Turkish  military  leaders  was  right  when  he  said  : 
"  This  war  is  a  question  of  extermination,  the  exter- 
mination of  the  Arabs  or  the  extermination  of  the 
Italians.  There  is  not  room  in  Tripolitania  for  both." 
Thus,  Italy's  very  proximity  to  Tripolitania,  on 
which  she  based  her  absurd  ultimatum,  is  a  draw- 
back. If  the  new  colony  is  flooded  with  cheap  Italian 
labour,  the  prestige  of  Rome  will  at  once  go  to  the 
dogs.  If  there  is  no  Italian  emigration  to  Tripoli- 
tania, the  colony  will  only  be  a  white  elephant,  for 
assuredly  English  and  French  money  will  never  be 
invested  in  such  a  shaky  speculation.  And  here  I 
might  refer  the  reader  to  the  Riforma  Sociale,  in 
which  Luigi  Einaudi,  the  jingo  economist  of  the 
Corriere  delta  Sera,  now  confesses  that  foreign  capital 
is  indispensable  for  the  development  of  Tripolitania. 
But  I  am  afraid  that  Italy  will  wait  a  long  time 
before  any  foreign  capitalist  nibbles  at  such  an  un- 
enticing  bait  as  the  Libyan  Desert,  especially  when 
he  sees  that,  in   the   same   article,   Signor   Einaudi 


324        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

maintains  that  "  it  is  perhaps  indispensable,  so  as  to 
gain  over  the  bulk  of  the  population,  which  reflects 
little  and  reasons  less,  to  diffuse  a  moderate  dose  of 
illusion  regarding  the  wealth  of  the  new  colony." 

I  have  already  shown  that  Italy  was  in  many  ways 
fortunate  in  the  time  she  chose  for  her  raid.  The 
Turkish  garrison  had  never  been  so  low,  the  com- 
mander of  the  troops  was  absent,  while  the  attention 
of  all  Europe  was  engrossed  by  the  Moroccan  question. 
But  one  thing  was  against  Italy,  the  hatred  of  the 
Turks  by  the  Tripolitans  had  already  become  an  old 
story.  Perfect  peace  was  reigning  in  the  vilayet 
when  the  Italians  came.  The  Turks  held  it  peacefully 
with  10,000  soldiers,  while  the  Italians  will  not  be 
able  to  hold  it  with  200,000.  A  few  months  before 
the  war  Mahmud  Shefket  Pasha,  the  Turkish  War 
Minister,  was  proposing  to  arm  the  Tripolitan  Arabs. 
This  measure  was  really  equivalent  to  Home  Rule, 
and  it  was  to  prevent  it  taking  practical  shape  that 
the  Italians  declared  war  when  they  did.  At  least, 
this  was  one  of  many  reasons. 

The  Arabs  of  Tripolitania  were  quite  pleased  with 
the  Turkish  "  yoke  " — at  least  they  are  fighting 
desperately  at  the  present  moment  in  order  to  keep 
it  on  their  necks.  General  Caneva  was  wrong,  there- 
fore, in  thinking  that  they  were  on  his  side.  "  II 
iradimento  degli  Arabi  e  stato  certamente  una  sorpressa  " 
("  The  treason  of  the  Arabs  has  certainly  been  a 
surprise  "),  wailed  all  the  Italian  papers  after  October 
23rd.  There  was  no  treason,  and  the  opposition  of 
the  natives  should  not  have  been  a  surprise.  General 
Caneva' s  idea  that  the  Tripolitans  would  march  with 
him  against  "  the  common  enemy,"  the  Turk,  was 
one  of  the  maddest  ideas  ever  entertained  by  a 
military   commander.      For   as    Mohammedans    the 


CANEVA'S   MISTAKE  325 

Tripolitan  Arabs  are  the  strictest  of  the  strict,  and 
their  only  quarrel  with  the  Turks  was  that  the  latter 
were  too  lukewarm  in  the  faith,  too  friendly  with 
the  Infidel.  That  the  Arabs  of  Tripoli  could  under 
any  circumstances  ally  themselves  with  Christians 
against  their  own  co-religionists  is  unthinkable.  It 
was  the  natural  thing  for  the  Arabs  to  oppose  the 
invaders,  and  if  Consul  Galli  had  prophesied  other- 
wise, the  Arabs  were  not  to  blame  when  those  pro- 
phecies came  wrong. 

Bearing  in  mind,  therefore,  the  misapprehensions 
as  to  the  Arabs  under  which  General  Caneva  laboured 
when  he  came  to  Tripoli,  the  subsequent  story  is 
easy  to  understand.  First  we  have  the  grandfatherly 
proclamations  ;  then  the  liberty  allowed  to  the  Desert 
Arabs  to  slip  inside  the  Italian  lines ;  then  the  sudden 
change  on  the  part  of  the  Italian  commander  from 
imbecile  benignity  to  ferocious  cruelty. 

The  Proclamations  would  form  a  very  amusing 
little  book.  The  Italian  commander  seems  to  have 
discovered  somewhere  a  rare  volume,  which  I  expect, 
by  the  by,  to  see  re-issued  by  some  enterprising 
publisher  ere  the  present  craze  for  Napoleonic 
literature  has  died  out.  I  refer  to  the  remarkable 
series  of  proclamations  which  General  Buonaparte 
addressed  to  the  Mohammedans  of  the  Nile  valley 
on  the  occasion  of  his  Egyptian  expedition.  In 
those  proclamations  Napoleon  said  that  he  had 
come  to  free  the  Egyptians  from  the  yoke  of  the 
Circassian  beys.  He  quoted  the  Koran  freely  in 
order  to  show  that  the  Mohammedans  should  obey 
him.  He  frequently  appealed  to  Allah  the  Merciful, 
the  Compassionate.  He  wrote  throughout  in  the 
ultra-pious,  semi-religious  style  of  a  devout  Moslem 
administrator. 


826        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

General  Caneva  did  the  same.  He  began  his  pro- 
clamations with  the  stereotyped  Mohammedan  phrase : 
"  In  nome  de  Dio  clemente  e  misericordioso,  regnando 
sul  gran  paese  d'ltalia  Sua  Maesta  il  Re  Vittorio 
Emanuele  III  che  Dio  conservi  e  renda  sempre  piu 
grande  e  glorioso."  He  had  come  to  release  the 
people  from  "  the  servitude  of  the  Turks,"  and  "  to 
punish  the  usurpers."  I  have  been  ordered,  he  said, 
by  the  King  of  Italy  ("to  whom  Allah  grant  length 
of  days  ")  to  "  protect  you  against  those  foreign 
usurpers,  the  Turks,  and  against  every  one  else  that 
may  attempt  to  enslave  you."  He  described  the 
Turk  as  "  the  common  enemy." 

He  never  mentioned  the  King  of  Italy  without 
adding  some  phrase  such  as  "  just  and  glorious," 
"  whom  God  preserve,"  "  whom  Allah  keep  in 
his  guard,"  "  che  Bio  henedica,'"  "  che  Iddio  pro- 
teggar 

He  invited  them  to  "  pray  in  your  mosques  for 
the  greatness  of  the  Italian  people,  for  the  glory  of 
the  Italian  king,  che  Dio  salvi,  who  have  taken  you, 
the  population  of  these  countries,  under  their  tutelage 
and  protection,  and  who  intend  that  their  name 
shall  be  feared  by  your  enemies,  but  loved  and 
blessed  by  you." 

He  promised  to  govern  by  "  the  Book,"  the  "  Laws," 
the  "  Sunna,"  and  the  "  Sheriat."  Like  Napoleon, 
he  quoted  freely  from  the  Koran  in  order  to  show 
that  the  Arabs  should  obey  him.  "  Remember,"  he 
said,  "  that  Allah  has  declared  in  the  Book :  '  To  those 
who  do  not  make  war  on  your  religion  and  do  not 
drive  you  from  your  country,  you  should  do 
good.  You  should  protect  them  because  God 
loves  benefactors  and  protectors.'  Remember  also 
that    it    is    written    in    the    Book :     '  If    they    in- 


CANEVA'S  MISTAKE  327 

cline  to  peace,  accept  it,  and  place  your  trust  in 
Allah.'  "  1 

He  even  attempted  a  little  poetic  flight  when  he 
described  the  white,  red,  and  green  of  the  Italian 
flag  as  symbolical  of  faith,  love,  and  hope. 

So  far  as  the  Mohammedans  were  concerned,  the 
publication  of  these  rigmaroles  only  made  matters 
worse.  It  was  only  adding  blasphemy  to  injury. 
It  was  a  case  of  a  clumsy  Infidel  parodying  the  sacred 
writings. 

Here  ends  abruptly  the  resemblance  between 
General  Caneva  and  General  Buonaparte.  Napoleon 
followed  up  his  proclamations  by  deeds.  He  boldly 
advanced  into  the  interior,  and  victory  crowned 
his  arms.  Caneva  fortified  himself  as  close  to  the 
shore  as  possible,  and  now,  after  the  lapse  of  more 
than  half  a  year,  he  still  stands  shivering  under  the 
guns  of  his  battle-ships. 

After  the  battle  of  the  Pyramids  many  of  the  Arabs 
did  believe  Napoleon  to  be  really  assisted  by  the 
Prophet,  for  this  warlike  race  admires  valour  in 
others  and  is  powerfully  impressed  by  it.  But  after 
Sharashett  and  Sidi  Messri  there  were  few,  indeed, 
even  among  his  own  troops,  who  put  their  trust  in 
Lieutenant-General  Carlo  Caneva. 

There  was  one  who  did,  however,  and  that  was 
General  Caneva  himself.  Until  October  23rd  he 
believed  his  own  proclamations,  he  believed  that  the 
Arabs  regarded  him  as  a  father,  and  this  led,  firstly, 
to  his  failure  to  disarm  them,  and,  secondly,  to  his 

*  The  Sheikh  of  the  Senussi  can  quote  Scripture  too.  In  a  recent 
letter  to  Enver  Bey  he  only  cited  one  short  text,  but  every  word  was 
a  ton  weight.  It  was  this,  "  God  will  destroy  the  murderers."  He  is 
not  confining  himself,  however,  to  quoting  the  Koran.  He  is  also 
developing  a  taste  for  music,  and  has  imported  a  large  number  of 
extraordinarily  heavy  pianos.  But  I  don't  think  that  the  Italians 
will  like  the  tune  which  those  "  pianos  "  play. 


828        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

slackness  in  letting  them  enter  his  lines  whenever 
they  had  a  mind  to  do  so.  Any  Turkish  officer  who 
chose  to  don  a  turban  and  an  Arab  robe  could  stroll 
in  from  the  Desert  and  examine  the  Italian  defences 
— and  this  at  a  time  when  the  journalists  in  Tripoli 
were  exposed  to  a  double-barrelled  censorship,  one 
at  Tripoli,  the  other  at  Rome ;  and  were  sure  that 
if  one  barrel  missed  them  the  other  would  be  sure 
to  hit.  The  Italian  Censor  interrupted  telephone 
messages  between  Milan  and  Paris  every  time  the 
word  Tripoli  was  mentioned.  He  prohibited  the 
foreign  correspondents  going  to  Chiasso  in  order  to 
send  off  their  telegrams,  lest  by  any  chance  these 
telegrams  would,  after  they  had  appeared  in  the 
papers,  be  re-transmitted  to  Constantinople  and  then 
sent  on  to  Nesciat  Bey  via  Tunisia.  He  even  seized 
letters  in  the  post.  Mr.  Donohoe  tells  me  that  on 
calling  one  morning  on  the  Censor  he  found  on  the 
latter' s  table  a  letter  which  he  had  posted  that 
morning  and  which  he  had  fondly  supposed  to  be 
then  on  its  way  to  London.  Yet  all  this  time 
General  Caneva  benignantly  permitted  swarms  of 
spies  to  examine  his  defences,  and  then  ride  into  the 
desert  to  report  about  them  ! 

Caneva  was,  as  I  have  said,  deceived  by  his 
Government  on  the  subject  of  the  Arabs ;  neverthe- 
less he  himself  cannot  be  regarded  as  entirely  blame- 
less in  this  matter. 

The  attitude  of  the  Arabs  was  the  greatest  factor 
in  the  military  problem  before  him ;  but  from  the  day 
he  landed  until  the  day  he  was  surprised  in  the  rear, 
he  paid  absolutely  no  attention  to  that  vitally  im- 
portant subject. 

Before  October  23rd  Caneva's  plan  had  evidently 
been  to  send  an  expedition  as  soon  as  possible  to 


CANEVA'S    MISTAKE  329 

Gharian.  As  soon  as  the  Bersaglieri  had  reached  the 
front  it  was  confidently  given  out  night  after  night 
that,  next  time  the  Turks  came  to  attack,  they  would 
be  cut  off ;  and  many  a  correspondent  lost  his  sleep 
while  foolishly  waiting  up  at  the  front  for  this  capture 
to  take  place.  Then  the  air  was  full  of  talk  about 
the  Great  Desert  Expedition.  The  Commander- 
in-chief  announced  that  he  would  take  no  journalists 
with  him  on  that  expedition,  whereupon  the  Italian 
journalists  sent  a  collective  protest  to  Rome  and  the 
newspapers  made  collective  war  on  the  War  Office. 
An  enormous  amount  of  printing-ink  was  consumed 
in  this  way.  Really  it  might  have  been  better  em- 
ployed, for  more  than  six  months  have  now  elapsed, 
yet  the  Great  Desert  Expedition  has  not  yet  started 
and  there  is  small  prospect  of  it  starting  for  nine 
months  yet,  if  ever  it  starts  at  all. 

The  Great  Desert  Expedition  was  knocked  on  the 
head,  of  course,  by  the  events  of  October  23rd.  That 
day  showed  that  the  Turks  had  succeeded  in  most 
cleverly  turning  to  military  account  the  religious 
fanaticism  of  the  Arabs.  The  Italians  have  ever 
since  been  besieged  in  Tripoli,  Benghazi,  Tobruk, 
Homs,  and  Derna,  and  are  unable  to  venture  out- 
side the  range  of  the  guns  on  the  battle-ships.  The 
"  Vossische  Zeitung  "  correspondent  at  Azizia  gives  a 
graphic  account  of  the  stalemate  in  Tripoli.  General 
Caneva  is,  he  says,  exactly  where  he  was  after  the 
first  occupation  of  the  coast,  with  the  additional  dis- 
advantage of  an  army  greatly  depressed  by  inactivity. 
*•  The  Italians  send  out  the  Askaris  (native  troops) : 
the  Askaris  surrender.  They  recruit  Arabs :  the 
Arabs  are  captured.  Swarms  of  spies  and  agents 
are  sent  out,  only  to  be  destroyed.  Appeals  and 
proclamations  are  scattered  by  the  thousand.     The 


880        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

enemy  laughs  till  his  sides  ache."  He  adds  that  the 
Arabs  are  stealing  even  the  material  for  the  railway 
which  has  been  begun.  Here  they  are  certainly 
doing  a  service  to  the  Italian  taxpayer,  for  that  rail- 
way is  a  gigantic  folly.  It  starts  from  Tripoli.  It 
has  no  other  terminus  save  the  Sahara.  It  has  no 
object  save  to  run  down  the  mobile  and  fleet-footed 
Arab,  to  pursue  the  mirages  of  the  Desert. 


CHAPTER    VI 

CANEVA'S  NEGLECT  TO  DISARM  THE  ARABS 

I  HAVE  said  that,  besides  being  over-cautious,  General 
Caneva  was  not  cautious  enough.  The  first  thing 
he  should  have  done  on  landing  was  to  seize  all  the 
arms  in  the  town,  then  to  place  a  powerful  reserve 
in  the  city  and  to  thoroughly  patrol  the  streets.  But 
he  made  no  serious  attempt  to  collect  arms  from  the 
natives,  and,  incredible  as  it  may  seem,  he  placed  all 
his  soldiers  save  his  personal  guards  out  at  the  front, 
a  couple  of  miles  off.  He  actually  kept  no  reserves  in 
the  town.  The  policing  and  patrolling  of  the  city  he 
left  to  the  Arab  gendarmes  who  had  served  the 
Turks,  and  who  were  still  allowed  to  go  about  with 
rifles  and  with  belts  full  of  very  ugly-looking  dum-dum 
bullets.  I  really  think  that  General  Caneva  intended 
to  be  magnanimous,  but  a  weak  man  is  sometimes 
magnanimous  in  the  wrong  way.  He  begins  with  a 
neglect  of  precaution  which  would  make  a  boy  scout 
laugh,  and  winds  up  with  a  cruelty  which  would  make 
Abd-ul-Hamid's  hair  stand  on  end. 

I  shall  now,  even  at  the  risk  of  wearying  the  reader, 
go  thoroughly  into  this  question  of  the  non-seizure 
of  arms,  for  General  Caneva's  negligence  in  this  matter 
afterwards  cost  thousands  of  innocent  people  their 
lives. 

The  Italian  marines  occupied  the  city  of  Tripoli 
on  October  5th.    At  their  head  was  a  very  competent 

331 


332         ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

officer,  Captain  Cagni,  the  associate  of  the  Duke  of 
the  Abruzzi  in  Arctic  travel.  A  few  hours  after  he 
landed,  Cagni  asked  Prince  Hassuna  Karamanli  to 
see  about  the  collection  of  arms  from  the  natives. 
The  Prince  probably  sent  a  crier  through  the  streets 
to  tell  the  people  in  a  friendly  way  that  all  arms  must 
be  forthwith  surrendered.  He  offered  two  talleri 
(about  one  scudo)  for  rifles  surrendered  on  that  day, 
one  tallero  next  day.  Those  not  given  up  before  the 
third  day  he  would  take  without  compensation.  On 
the  first  day  more  than  a  thousand  rifles  with  am- 
munition for  them  were  brought  to  the  Comando. 
Five  hundred  were  brought  the  second  day.  On  the 
third  day,  and  for  some  time  afterwards,  rifles  con- 
tinued to  come  in  though  no  reward  had  been  offered 
for  them.  As  I  shall  explain  later,  most  of  these 
rifles  had  been  looted  from  the  Turkish  barracks  by 
the  Arabs  after  the  Turks  had  left  the  city,  and 
before  the  Italians  had  come  in.  For  whenever  there 
is  a  chance  of  looting,  the  Arab  desires  fire-arms 
next  after  money.  If  there  had  been  Arabs  at  the 
looting  of  Peking  in  1900,  they  would  have  collected 
rifles  and  left  the  precious  jade  figures  and  other 
artistic  treasures  of  the  Manchu  emperors  to  the 
Europeans.  Next  after  a  pedigree  Arab  stallion 
there  is  nothing  the  Bedouin  lusts  for  so  much  as  a 
good  new  Mauser  rifle  with  a  nice  shiny  barrel.  As 
a  rule,  its  high  price  and  the  suspicion  of  his  rulers 
put  it  out  of  reach;  but  his  lonely  and  dangerous 
manner  of  life  and  the  inadequate  police  protection 
which  he  enjoys  under  Ottoman  rule,  make  him 
value  it  exceedingly  for  strictly  practical  reasons. 

As  will  be  seen  later,  this  fact  has  an  important 
bearing  on  my  subject.  It  accounts  for  the  great 
number  of  rifles  and  the  large  quantities  of  ammuni- 


CANEVA'S   NEGLECT  333 

tion  which  were  afterwards  found  concealed  in  Arab 
houses,  and  which  invariably  led  to  the  death  of  the 
householder. 

But  the  town  Arabs  quickly  surrendered  their 
weapons  to  Commander  Cagni.  "  Dominati  dal 
nuovo  potere  che  appariva,  gli  Arabi  si  separavano 
senza  lamenti  dalla  nuova  arma  lucente,  che  e  per  la  loro 
gente  oggetto  inuguagliato  di  desiderio  e  d'amore.'' 
("  Dominated  by  the  new  power  that  appeared, 
the  Arabs  surrendered  without  a  sigh  the  new, 
shining  rifles  which  are  for  their  race  unequalled 
objects  of  desire  and  of  love.")  So  says  an  Italian 
writer  who  saw  those  rifles  surrendered. 

But  every  European  in  Tripoli  knew  that  all  the 
rifles  in  the  hands  of  the  Arabs  had  not  been  sur- 
rendered. One  English  resident  told  me  so  about 
the  middle  of  October.  He  added  that  the  Italian 
authorities  knew  of  this  fact  also,  but  thought  that 
it  was  sufficient  to  keep  a  register  in  which  were 
entered  the  names  of  all  the  Arabs  who  possessed 
arms.  My  friend  assured  me,  however,  that  this 
register  did  not  contain  the  names  of  half  the  Arabs 
who  had  arms. 

It  is  easy  to  understand  why  Commander  Cagni 
did  not  succeed  in  getting  all  their  rifles  from  the  oasis 
folk.  His  public  crier  did  not  go  into  the  oasis. 
The  oasis  Arabs  did  not  come  to  town,  and  con- 
sequently knew  nothing  of  the  order  regarding  the 
surrender  of  arms.  Moreover,  with  only  12,000  men 
under  his  command  to  keep  back  a  possible  4000 
Turks  and  hold  a  dangerously  long  line,  Cagni  could 
not  possibly  institute  a  house-to-house  search.  His 
men  were  overwhelmed  with  work  as  it  was,  and 
hardly  able  to  walk  from  want  of  sleep,  otherwise 
this  distinguished  sailor  would  soon  have  got  posses- 


384        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

sion  of  every  rifle  owned  by  natives  inside  the  Italian 
sphere  of  occupation. 

What  he  did,  however,  showed  that  he  had  a  clear 
idea  of  the  danger,  both  to  the  Italians  and  to  the 
friendly  Arabs  themselves,  of  his  leaving  arms  in  the 
hands  of  the  natives. 

At  Benghazi  and  in  Cyrenaica,  General  Briccola 
took  the  same  view  of  the  matter.  Not  only  did  he 
order  the  surrender  of  all  arms  ;  he  also  took  care 
that  his  troops  searched  most  carefully  for  rifles  in 
the  houses,  gardens,  and  in  all  places  where  weapons 
could  possibly  have  been  hidden — even  in  the 
mosques.  When  General  Caneva  did  issue  some 
vague  orders  about  the  advisability  of  the  natives 
letting  the  paternal  Italian  visitors  take  care  of  their 
arms  for  them,  he  contented  himself  with  pasting 
up  those  orders  in  one  or  two  places  on  the  town 
walls.  Now,  many  of  the  Arabs  cannot  read  their 
own  language,  and  the  oasis  Arabs  remained  at  home, 
and  consequently  did  not  know  about  this  proclama- 
tion. 

No  steps  were  taken  to  make  it  known  among  the 
illiterate  Arabs.  I  myself  employed  a  pro-Italian 
native  to  get  news  for  me,  and  I  naturally  mixed 
with  the  Italians,  with  my  journalistic  colleagues, 
and  with  all  sorts  of  people  in  order  to  acquire  every 
kind  of  information  bearing  on  the  situation ;  but  I 
never  heard  even  as  much  as  a  whisper  about  this 
proclamation  of  General  Caneva' s,  while  I  was  in 
Tripoli.  I  first  became  aware  of  it  in  Italy  after  I 
had  left  Tripolitania,  early  in  November. 

But  even  if  this  proclamation  had  been  posted  up 
on  every  house  in  Tripoli  instead  of  on  one  or  two  dead 
walls,  that  would  not  have  been  enough.  More 
energetic  measures  should  have  been  taken  to  collect 


CANEVA'S  NEGLECT  335 

arms.  The  Arabs  are  a  suspicious  race  ;  they  are  not 
accustomed  to  European  ways  ;  and  the  order  to  hand 
in  their  rifles  may  have  only  excited  the  alarm  of 
the  few  natives  who  chanced  to  see  it.  Most  of  the 
weapons  had  originally  been  stolen  from  deserted 
Turkish  barracks  ;  and  the  owners  may  have  thought 
that,  if  they  brought  in  their  booty,  the  foreigners 
would  only  punish  them  for  having  looted. 

There  was  another  reason,  moreover,  why  the 
Arabs  should  be  reluctant  to  part  with  their  arms — 
even  those  Arabs  who  knew  that  they  had  been 
ordered  to  do  so.  As  I  have  already  remarked, 
those  arms  had  been  necessary  for  them  under  the 
Turkish  regime  with  its  inefficient  police.  Under 
that  regime  they  had  had,  to  a  large  extent,  to 
protect  themselves  as  all  people  have  still  to  do  in 
the  outlying  parts  of  the  Ottoman  Empire.  Under 
the  Caneva  regime  things  were  even  worse  so  far  as 
an  adequate  policing  of  the  town  and  the  oasis  was 
concerned.  The  Commander-in-chief  talked  much 
in  his  proclamations  of  his  paternal  solicitude  for  the 
natives,  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  proved  himself 
to  be  simply  a  barrack-room  martinet  with  no 
capacity  for  civil  government  and  no  idea  that  he 
had  any  duty  vis-d-vis  of  the  thousands  of  ignorant 
and  helpless  natives  whose  obedience  he  claimed. 
The  worst  scoundrels  of  the  old  Turkish  police  force 
had  remained  in  town,  had  been  taken  into  the 
Italian  service,  and  to  them  alone  was  entrusted  the 
policing  of  the  city  and  the  suburbs.  There  was  an 
army  at  the  front,  a  fleet  in  the  harbour,  but  between 
the  two  was  chaos.  There  was  practically  no  civil 
government  in  the  town  ;  and  despite  the  twenty 
thousand  armed  men  at  his  elbow,  the  average 
native  in  the  oasis  stood  in  much  more  danger  from 


386       ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

robbers  and  native  policemen  than  he  had  ever  stood 
in  under  Turkish  rule. 

It  would  have  been  better,  therefore,  for  all  parties 
if,  instead  of  spending  his  time  composing  Koranic 
proclamations,  the  military  Governor  had  tried  to 
inspire  a  feeling  of  security  in  the  town.  In  any  case, 
if  he  wanted  to  disarm  the  people,  a  house-to-house 
search  was  essential,  especially  as  General  Caneva 
knew  that  not  one-tenth  part  of  the  rifles  stolen  from 
the  Turkish  arsenals  during  the  interregnum  had 
been  surrendered.  What  prevented  him  from  order- 
ing his  soldiers  to  make  a  minute  visitation  of  the 
native  houses,  as  General  Briccola  had  done  ?  He 
had  plenty  of  soldiers  for  this  purpose ;  and  if  he 
did  not  wish  to  withdraw  his  troops  from  the  firing- 
line,  though  they  had  very  little  to  do  there  early 
in  October,  he  might  have  made  use  of  the  blue- 
jackets and  of  his  numerous  civil  assistants.  Why 
was  there  no  "  revolt  "  and  repression  in  Derna, 
Benghazi,  Homs,  Tobruk,  and  the  other  places  oc- 
cupied by  the  Italians  ?  Because  at  all  these  points 
the  various  Italian  commanders  had  disarmed  the 
natives.  In  like  manner  there  would  have  been  no 
"  revolt  "  and  no  "  repression  "  at  Tripoli  if  General 
Caneva  had  taken  the  most  ordinary  precautions 
there  with  regard  to  the  disarmament  of  the  oasis 
Arabs,  whose  flimsy  and  isolated  hamlets  could, 
moreover,  have  been  very  easily  and  speedily  ex- 
amined. In  searching  for  arms  in  the  simple,  one- 
roomed  huts  of  the  Tripoli  oasis  the  Italians  would 
have  had  no  trouble  such  as  they  might  experience 
in  the  narrow  and  tortuous  streets  of  a  great  city. 

The  fault  rests  not  so  much,  perhaps,  with  General 
Caneva  himself  as  with  his  political  advisers  and 
with  the  Government  at  Rome.     Both  the  advisers 


r.  -J 

-  X 

I  H 

X  O 


CANEVA'S   NEGLECT  337 

and  the  Government  had  received  such  optimistic 
and  rosy  accounts  of  the  good  dispositions  of  the 
Arabs  that  they  thought  it  would  be  a  great  pity  to 
disturb  the  poor  dear  natives  by  entering  their  homes 
and  possibly  interrupting  them  at  their  tea  in  order 
to  search  for  rifles.  Consul  Pestalozza  concurred  in 
this  matter  with  Vice-Consul  Galli.  It  was  thought 
that  a  rough,  coarse  search  for  arms  by  a  ribald 
soldiery  might  provoke  adverse  comment  in  native 
circles.  No  wonder  that  an  Italian  newspaper  after- 
wards described  this  policy  as  :  Machiavellismo  latte  e 
miele  i  cui  frutti  sono  staii  di  rivoltd  e  di  sangue,  e 
quanta  sangue  !  (Milk  -  and  -  honey  Machiavellism 
whose  fruits  have  been  revolt  and  blood,  and  how 
much  blood  !) 

General  Caneva  had,  I  repeat,  come  to  Tripoli  under 
a  complete  misapprehension  which  led  him  to  imagine 
that,  by  neglecting  to  disarm  the  natives,  he  was 
acting  with  a  wise  magnanimity  and  toleration.  He 
imagined  that  he  was  a  deliverer ;  and,  when  Consul 
Galli's  well-trained  troupe  of  bogus  Arab  chiefs 
kow-towed  and  performed  before  him,  he  was  pro- 
foundly convinced  that  the  great  heart  of  the  people 
welcomed  him  almost  as  a  god. 

What  a  wild  rush  to  the  opposite  extreme  when  the 
alleged  revolt  took  place  !  A  collection  of  the  pro- 
clamations issued  at  this  time  would  only  give  a 
faint  idea  of  the  mercilessness  and  injustice  with 
which  the  Arabs  were  treated. 

"  Si  pubblica  in  questo  momento,"  wires  one 
correspondent,  Corrado  Zoli,  "  un  bando  del  Govern- 
atore  che  intima  il  disarmo  assoluto  della  popolazione 
araba  e  turca  prima  del  calar  del  sole,  pena  la  im- 
mediata  fucilazione."  ("  There  is  published  at 
this  moment  an  order  of  the  Governor  for  the  com- 


388        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

plete  disarmament  of  the  Arab  and  Turkish  popula- 
tion before  sunset,  under  pain  of  instant  death.") 
"  II  generale  Caneva,"  according  to  the  official 
cable,  "ha  fatto  eseguire  un  rigoroso  disarmo  degli 
abitanti  dell'  oasi  stessa  ed  in  citta.  ("  General 
Caneva  has  had  carried  out  a  rigorous  disarmament 
of  the  inhabitants  of  the  oasis  and  the  city.") 

Now,  I  think  that  this  "  rigoroso  disarmo  "  might 
much  better  have  been  carried  out  earlier.  It  might 
have  been  carried  out  during  Caneva' s  benignant 
period,  when  the  soldiers  were  foolishly  familiar 
with  the  natives,  as  Latin  races  are  prone  to  be  when 
they  go  a-colonising.  All  the  arms  could  then  have 
been  collected  without  much  trouble,  and  nobody 
on  either  side  would  have  lost  his  life  or  even  his 
temper. 

But  it  was  now,  at  the  most  unsuitable  time 
possible,  that  the  search  for  arms  began.  Few  of 
the  oasis  natives  who  were  in  possession  of  arms 
heard  of  General  Caneva's  "  twenty-four  hours " 
proclamation. 

Even  if  they  had  heard  of  that  proclamation,  they 
could  not  have  benefited  by  the  exiguous  time- 
limit  allowed,  for  if  they  had  set  out  from  their 
houses  carrying  arms  which  they  intended  to  sur- 
render they  would  have  been  shot  by  the  first  soldier 
who  met  them.  There  was  no  possibility  of  ex- 
planation, as  there  seemed  to  be  only  two  or  three 
interpreters  in  the  entire  army. 

But,  as  a  rule,  the  unfortunate  oasis  Arabs  seem 
to  have  made  little  or  no  attempt  to  give  up  their 
rifles.  Frightened  by  the  executions,  they  remained 
cowering  all  day  in  their  isolated  huts  and  knew 
nothing  of  the  new  departure  until  the  soldiers  came 
to  search  for  arms — and  to  kill  them.    Those  soldiers 


CANEVA'S   NEGLECT  339 

came,  in  most  cases,  without  officers,  and  in  every 
case  without  interpreters.  All  attempts  of  the  Arabs 
to  explain  matters  were  treated  as  insults  and 
answered  by  savage  blows  on  the  face  and  kicks  in 
the  stomach. 

Now,  to  entrust  ignorant  privates,  during  such 
a  period  of  intense  excitement,  with  the  delicate 
work  of  searching  for  arms  among  people  whom 
they  regarded  as  traitors  and  murderers  was  simply 
to  give  them  thousands  of  blank  death-warrants. 
Those  soldiers  were  mostly  Sicilians,  almost  beside 
themselves  with  rage  for  what  they  regarded  as  the 
treacherous  murder  of  their  comrades  and  kinsfolk, 
almost  mad  with  thirst  for  revenge.  They  even 
killed  people  in  whose  houses  arms  of  any  kind  were 
found.  Some  of  the  fire-arms  discovered  during 
this  search  may  have  been  kept  with  a  bad  intention, 
but  a  good  many  were  old  muzzle-loading  heirlooms, 
and  a  good  many  had  simply  been  looted.  Ancient 
flintlocks  such  as  are  to  be  found  in  every  Arab 
hovel  and  in  every  caravan  led  in  many  cases  to  their 
owner's  death. 

It  may  be  maintained  that  the  soldiers  were 
ordered  simply  to  arrest  people  found  in  possession 
of  arms  ;  and  proclamations  of  General  Caneva's 
may  possibly  be  produced  to  bear  out  this  statement. 
But  no  matter  what  the  proclamations  said,  the  fact 
remains  that  the  soldiers  took  the  law  into  their  own 
hands  and  killed  every  Arab  in  whose  house  they 
found  arms.  In  proof  of  this  I  need  only  point  to 
the  Italian  newspapers  themselves.  They  were  filled 
at  this  period  with  accounts  of  houses  being  searched, 
arms  discovered,  the  householders  shot.  There  was 
never  any  mention  made  of  a  trial  or  even  of  the  sus- 
pected parties  being  brought  before  an  officer.    In  one 


340         ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

case  a  correspondent  tells  how  he  sympathised  with 
some  poor  Arabs  whose  house  was  being  searched, 
when  he  saw  their  humble  clothes,  articles  of  food,  and 
cooking  utensils  being  thrown  about.  The  soldiers 
were  going  to  turn  away,  satisfied  that  there  were  no 
arms  concealed,  when  suddenly  they  came  on  a 
knife  and  some  cartridges.  Then,  hey  presto !  what 
a  change  !  Without  further  ado  the  Arabs  were 
immediately  put  against  a  wall  and  shot. 

The  "  Stampa "  of  Turin  is  a  jingo  Italian 
paper.  It  has  ardently  supported  the  war  since  the 
beginning,  it  is  on  notoriously  friendly  terms  with 
Signor  Giolitti.  It  is  a  serious  and  authoritative 
organ,  yet  it  published  on  October  27th,  the  follow- 
ing account  of  an  execution  written  on  October  26th 
by  its  Tripoli  correspondent,  a  personal  friend  of 
Signor  Giolitti's  : 

"  I  felt  it  my  duty  to  assist  at  the  shooting  of 
several  of  those  (oasis  Arabs  who  had  been  seized 
and  condemned  to  death  because  arms  were  found 
in  their  houses).  A  man  and  his  wife,  two  mag- 
nificent types  of  the  Bedouin  race,  and,  besides, 
intrepid  carriers  of  arms,  had  been  placed  against 
the  usual  wall.  At  the  distance  of  a  few  paces 
from  them  lay  in  an  attitude  of  atrocious  suffering, 
but  really  dead  and  stiff,  the  body  of  a  Sudanese 
who  had  fired  point-blank  at  a  medical  officer. 
The  two  newly  captured  Arabs,  the  man  and  the 
woman,  did  not  show  for  a  single  instant  any  fear 
or  reluctance.  They  did  not  take  their  eyes  from 
one  another.  They  held  one  another  affectionately 
by  the  hand.  Then  they  recited  a  prayer.  They 
turned  their  backs  to  the  rifle-barrels  that  were 
levelled  at  them.    Then  a  dry  word  of  command  : 


CANEVA'S   NEGLECT  341 

'  Fire  on  the  man  !  '  An  explosion,  a  flash  !  The 
woman  had  to  let  go  the  hand  of  her  husband,  for, 
after  having  swayed  a  second,  he  had  fallen  to  the 
ground  like  lead.  But  she  was  not  terrified.  She 
awaited  her  own  death  without  a  tremor.  Another 
shout :  '  Fire  on  the  woman  ! '  Another  abrupt 
explosion,  and  the  woman's  brains  spurted  out." 

At  first  the  Italian  papers  saw  nothing  wrong  with 
this  paragraph,  but  when  the  English  Press  quoted 
it,  with  expressions  of  disgust,  some  of  them  fell 
upon  the  "  Stampa  "  for  publishing  it.  Note  well, 
they  did  not  object  to  the  deed,  they  objected  to 
any  account  of  it  being  published.  Through  how 
many  hundreds  of  columns  of  similar  "  copy  "  have 
not  the  blue  pencils  of  the  censors  and  of  the  sub- 
editors gone  since  this  war  began  !  For,  of  course, 
it  is  not  right  that  the  Italians  should  know  what  it 
really  is,  this  ferocious  war  which  they  are  waging. 
Telegrams  from  the  battle-field  should  only  speak 
of  the  "  disciplina,  la  calma,  1'  energia  "  of  our  "  valo- 
rosi "  and  of  "  1'  eroismo  dei  nostri  Bersaglieri "  (the 
heroism  of  our  Bersaglieri).  It  is  very,  very  in- 
discreet to  publish  anything  that  may  tend  to  excite 
sympathy  with  the  enemy. 

In  his  official  report.  General  Caneva  says  that  on 
searching  the  oasis  he  found  "  arms  hidden  every- 
where and  huts  filled  with  provisions  and  ammuni- 
tion." He  says  that  "  the  huts  were  burned,  it 
being  impossible  to  provide  for  the  prompt  removal 
of  the  cartridges." 

Signor  Giolitti  says  that  "  many  of  the  dwellings 
in  the  oasis,  when  set  on  fire,  exploded  like  powder- 
magazines,  so  large  were  the  stores  of  arms  and  am- 
munition hidden  in  them."    Signor  Barzini  tells  us  of 


342        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

"  one  house  from  which  were  taken  250  kilogrammes 
of  ammunition,  800  kilogrammes  of  explosives,  and 
a  Turkish  flag." 

All  the  other  Italian  correspondents  have  similar 
tales,  and,  judging  by  those  tales,  it  is  clear  that 
Tripoli  was  all  one  big  bomb. 

Writing  in  the  "  Corriere  della  Sera  "  of  October 
12th,  Luigi  Barzini  says  that  "  the  sack  of  the 
forts  has  put  into  circulation  a  quantity  of  ex- 
plosives which  the  people  handle  with  all  the 
audacity  of  ignorance.  One  may  everywhere  see 
Jewish  boys  playing  with  live  projectiles  and  with 
live  shrapnel  shells."  Other  Italian  writers  were 
amazed  at  the  enormous  quantity  of  projectiles  and 
explosives  of  every  kind  which  the  Turks  had  accumu- 
lated. Besides  the  full  powder-magazines,  there  were 
in  the  forts  two  great  stores  of  powder  which  might 
have  lasted  (we  are  told)  throughout  a  long  war. 

Was  it  not  stupendous  carelessness  on  General 
Caneva's  part  thus  to  leave  huts  full  of  ammunition 
just  in  the  rear  of  his  line  ?  Imagine  any  General 
of  ordinary  capacity  committing  such  a  blunder. 
The  chunk  of  Tripolitan  territory  which  Caneva 
occupied  was  so  exiguous,  the  number  of  soldiers 
under  him  was  so  great,  that  a  fairly  efficient  search 
could  have  been  carried  out  in  a  few  hours.  And 
Caneva  had  had  a  fortnight  to  do  it  ! 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  never  was  a  town  so 
bursting  with  unofficial  arms  and  explosives  as 
Tripoli  was  at  this  time.  The  oasis  was  full  of 
arms.  The  city  was  overflowing  with  rifles.  Cart- 
ridges were  as  common  as  dates.  Gunpowder  was 
as  plentiful  as  salt.  If  my  own  trunks  had  been 
searched  at  this  time,  quite  a  number  of  Turkish 
and  Italian  cartridges  would  have  been  discovered. 


CANEVA'S  NEGLECT  343 

The  Italian  cartridges  I  had  found  out  at  the  trenches, 
the  Turkish  cartridges  I  had  picked  up  in  the  Cavalry 
Barracks,  where  the  Turks  had  left  behind  them 
from  50,000  to  100,000  rounds  of  Mauser  ammunition. 

This  superabundance  of  illegal  arms  and  ammuni- 
tion in  Tripoli  is  easily  explained.  On  the  evening 
of  October  2nd  the  Turkish  troops  had  all  left  Tripoli, 
with  the  exception  of  a  few  fortress  artillerymen. 
The  bluejackets,  under  Captain  Cagni,  did  not  take 
possession  of  the  town  until  October  5th.  The  Jews 
and  the  Arabs  of  the  town  and  the  oasis  had  thus 
three  clear  days  in  which  to  plunder  the  arsenals, 
the  gendarmery  stations,  the  post-houses,  the  bar- 
racks, and  even  the  Konak,  or  Governor's  residence. 
Some  weeks  afterwards  I  visited  the  Cavalry  Barracks 
on  the  edge  of  the  oasis,  and  Colonel  Spinelli  laugh- 
ingly pointed  out  how  the  natives  had,  during  the 
interregnum,  stolen  even  the  glass  from  the  windows 
and  the  handles  from  the  doors,  carried  off  hat-pegs, 
tables,  carpets,  and  latches.  In  short,  they  had 
appropriated  everything  that  they  could  lay  hands 
on,  and,  during  the  first  few  days  of  the  occupation, 
one  could  see  Arabs  selling  all  kinds  of  loot  to  the 
Italian  sailors — putties,  note-paper,  knapsacks,  etc. 

I  have  already  pointed  out  the  great  desire  all 
Arabs  have  to  possess  a  rifle.  Naturally,  therefore, 
the  rifles  and  ammunition  left  behind  by  the  Turks 
were  most  sought  after.  A  large  number  of  rifles 
had  been  left  behind,  and  the  Arabs  immediately 
seized  upon  those  treasures,  not  necessarily  to  use 
them  afterwards  against  the  Italians,  but  to  sell 
them,  if  possible. 

Some  people  may  say  :  "  This  is  a  far-fetched  theory. 
Surely  the  Turks  would  first  send  all  the  rifles  and 
ammunition  into  the  Desert."     Well,  they  did  not; 


344        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

evidently  they  had  not  time  to  do  so.  When  I 
visited  the  Cavalry  Barracks  on  the  occasion  already 
referred  to,  I  found  there,  as  I  have  just  pointed 
out,  hundreds  of  boxes  of  rifle  and  machine-gun 
cartridges.  A  great  deal  of  this  ammunition  had 
been  stolen,  but  before  the  Arabs  could  cart  away 
all  of  it  the  invaders  had  taken  possession  of  the 
Cavalry  Barracks.  Sometimes  an  Arab  stole  only 
ammunition  ;    sometimes  he  specialised  in  rifles. 

In  the  batteries,  the  citadel,  and  all  over  the  town 
this  looting  of  explosives  went  on  during  the  bom- 
bardment until  there  was  a  trail  of  gunpowder  along 
the  streets  and  quite  respectable  powder-magazines 
in  many  of  the  houses.  At  one  time  there  was  some 
danger  that  an  Italian  shell  might  ignite  this  trail 
and  blow  up  half  the  town.  Behind  the  English 
cable-office  on  the  Marina  an  Arab  blew  himself  up 
by  accidentally  applying  a  light  to  a  large  quantity 
of  explosive  matter  which  he  had  diligently  collected ; 
and  the  explosion  caused  consternation  for  a  time, 
as  it  was  at  first  supposed  to  have  been  caused  by  a 
projectile  from  one  of  the  battle-ships. 

Seized  by  the  prevalent  collecting  craze,  even  the 
Arab  servants  of  Europeans  could  not  resist  the 
temptation  to  surreptitiously  convey  rifles,  shells, 
and  gunpowder  into  their  masters'  houses.  Mr. 
Wright,  an  Englishman  who  represents  in  Tripoli 
the  Eastern  Telegraph  Company,  suddenly  found 
one  day,  during  the  interregnum,  that  there  was  about 
a  quarter  of  a  ton  of  high  explosive  in  his  cellar. 
It  had  been  industriously  collected  by  his  Arab 
servants,  who  had  stolen  it,  not  because  they  wanted 
to  blow  up  the  Italians  when  they  entered  the  city, 
but  because  they  had  been  urged  on  by  that  ant- 
like craze  for  accumulation  which  is  as  marked  a 


CANEVA'S   NEGLECT  345 

characteristic^of  the  Arab  as  it  is  of  his  cousin  the 
Jew.  It  was  the  only  loot  left  in  the  forts  when 
they  arrived,  and  everybody  else  was  busy  carrying 
it  off. 

Mr.  Wright  dealt  with  the  situation  in  a  masterly 
manner.  He  instantly  went  down  to  the  servants' 
quarters  and  gave  his  "  boys  "  one  hour  to  have  all 
that  explosive  sent  out  of  the  house.  At  the  end  of 
the  hour  there  was  not  an  ounce  of  gunpowder  on 
his  premises.  Had  General  Caneva  behaved  like 
that  English  telegraph  operator,  the  horrors  of 
October  23rd-27th  would  not  have  taken  place, 
or  would  have  been  very  limited  in  scope.  As  it 
was,  every  Arab  possessing  even  an  empty  cartridge 
was  put  to  death,  though  undoubtedly  much  of  the 
ammunition  found  in  the  Arab  houses  had  been 
brought  there  simply  as  loot  and  not  for  offensive 
purposes. 

On  visiting  the  fort  of  Sharashett,  some  days  after 
the  bombardment,  I  found  some  dozen  Arabs  busily 
engaged  in  extracting  the  explosive  matter  from 
unexploded  shells.  As  they  only  used  a  hammer 
and  chisel  in  this  dangerous  work,  I  rapidly  put  a 
hill  between  them  and  myself  and  only  regarded 
them  afterwards  through  binoculars.  The  Italians 
also  contemplated  them  with  much  amusement 
and  also  at  a  respectful  distance.  By  some  miracle 
or  other  these  men  escaped  being  blown  to  pieces 
until  October  23rd,  when  the  Italians,  seized  by  a 
sudden  suspicion  that  there  was  a  gigantic  con- 
spiracy against  them,  began  shooting  every  Arab 
who  had  powder  in  his  possession,  and  probably 
shot  the  Sharashett  powder-seekers  as  well.  At  all 
events,  those  powder-seekers  disappeared  after  that 
date  from  history. 


346         ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

Mark  the  abrupt  transition  from  criminal  slackness 
to  criminal  severity.  On  October  22nd  those  Arabs 
in  the  Sharashett  fort  and  the  other  forts  had  been 
extracting  powder,  not  literally  under  the  noses  of 
the  Italians — for,  like  myself,  the  Italians,  as  I  have 
said,  preferred  watching  these  proceedings  from  a 
safe  distance — but,  at  least,  with  the  connivance  of 
the  invaders.  On  October  23rd  any  of  these  same 
Arabs  who  was  found  with  powder  in  his  possession 
was  put  to  death.    To  this  rule  there  was  no  exception. 

Undoubtedly  General  Caneva  blundered  badly 
when  he  omitted  to  collect  their  arms  from  the 
natives.  Signor  Bevione,  the  jingo  and  Nationalist 
author  whose  dedication  of  his  book  on  the  war 
to  Signor  Giolitti  shows  that  he  views  the  Tripoli 
raid  in  the  proper  official  light,  is  forced  to  confess 
that  "  the  military  authorities  made  a  most  grave 
mistake  in  not  requiring  the  natives  to  give  up 
their  arms  on  the  first  day." 

An  even  more  pro-war  journalist  than  Signor 
Bevione  is  M.  Jean  Carrere,  the  Rome  correspondent 
of  "  Le  Temps  "  ;  but  even  he  declares,  in  an  inter- 
view which  appeared  in  the  "  Secolo  "  on  October 
26th,  that  the  invitation  to  the  Arabs  to  surrender 
their  rifles  in  return  for  a  compensation  of  ten  lire 
was  insufficient.  He  thinks  that  "  a  thorough 
search  "  of  the  oasis  should  also  have  been  made. 

And  the  "Secolo"  thinks  that  "it  may  have 
been  an  error  to  have  left  the  Arabs  their  rifles,  or 
not  to  have  kept  them  at  a  distance  from  the  scene 
of  operations." 


CHAPTER    VII 
HOW  THE  ARABS  GOT  IN  THE  ITALIAN  REAR 

Since  I  returned  to  England  many  Italians  have 
called  on  me  to  point  out  that  the  attack  on  the 
11th  Bersaglieri  on  October  23rd  was  a  full  justifica- 
tion for  the  killing  of  the  oasis  Arabs  which  followed. 
They  were  evidently  under  the  impression — and  I 
think  that  a  good  many  English  people  are  under 
the  same  impression — that  those  Bersaglieri  were 
playing  with  the  Arab  children  somewhere  far  inside 
what  I  shall  call  the  Italian  oasis,  when  suddenly 
the  children's  fathers  and  mothers  crept  behind 
them  and  treacherously  cut  the  soldiers'  throats. 
Nothing  could  be  further  from  the  truth.  The  11th 
Bersaglieri  were  on  the  extreme  edge  of  the  Italian 
line.  Hardly  any  Italian  force  was  further  from  the 
city  than  they.  And  the  attack  which  inflicted 
such  loss  on  them  was  made  by  the  fighting  Arabs 
outside.  Some  Arabs  inside  took  part  in  it,  but  most 
of  these  also  were  desert  Arabs,  who  had  previously 
traversed  the  Italian  lines  during  what  I  have  called 
General  Caneva's  benevolent  period.  Signor  Luigl 
Barzini,  the  extremely  jingo  and  anti-Arab  cor- 
respondent of  the  "  Corriere  della  Sera,"  admits 
this  himself  in  an  article  Avhich  appeared  in  that 
paper  on  November  6th  (page  4,  col.  2).  In  that 
article  he  acknowledges  that  the  attack  on  the 
Italian  rear  on  October  23rd  was  made,  after  all, 

347 


348         ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

by  fighting  Arabs  who  had  thus  slipped  through, 
their  rifles  concealed  underneath  their  loose,  flowing 
robes. 

The  same  admission  as  to  the  continual  presence 
of  Turkish  officers  in  the  town  was  made  to  me  by 
the  American  Consul  in  Tripoli.  As  early  as  October 
9th  he  told  me  that  he  had  met  in  the  street  Turkish 
officers  of  his  acquaintance.  They  were  disguised 
as  Arabs,  but  they  talked  to  him  freely.  An  English 
resident  also  met  disguised  Turkish  officers  in  the 
bazaar.  A  Turkish  soldier  even  came  to  his  house 
once,  asking  for  food.  "  The  Times  "  correspondent 
admits  that  disguised  Turkish  officers  were  "  con- 
stantly "  in  the  town.  Thus  we  have  very  important 
evidence — English,  American,  and  Italian — to  prove 
that  the  enemy  was  able  to  slip  through  the  Italian 
lines.  It  was  men  that  had  thus  slipped  through 
who  were  responsible  for  the  attack  on  the  Italian 
rear  which  occasioned  such  terrible  reprisals.  It 
is  possible,  of  course,  that  a  few  "  friendlies  "  may 
have  joined  in  this  attack,  but  I  do  not  believe  that 
they  numbered  more  than  one  hundred  in  all.  The 
Italians  say  that  they  numbered  thousands,  but  I 
have  already  shown  the  extraordinarily  unbalancing 
effect  of  panic  on  the  judgment  of  the  Italian  officers, 
soldiers,  and  civilians.  To  put  the  matter  in  a  nut- 
shell— General  Caneva  committed  great  mistakes 
of  omission  ;  and  when  the  natural  consequences  of 
these  mistakes  showed  themselves,  he  punished  not 
the  real  culprit — himself — but  the  innocent  oasis 
Arabs. 

He  had  been  warned  that  there  were  emissaries  of 
the  enemy  in  the  town.  On  October  20th  a  Franciscan 
friar  had  told  him  that  Turkish  agents  were  at  work 
among  the  Arabs  trying  to  bring  about  an  insur- 


HOW  ARABS   GOT  IN   THE   REAR       349 

rection.  The  Commander-in-chief  went  no  further 
than  to  reinforce  the  patrols,  which  walked  the 
streets  all  night  with  fixed  bayonets.  But  nothing 
occurred  that  night,  and  Caneva  forgot  all  about  the 
warning  which  he  had  received. 

Even  the  newspaper  correspondents  showed  better 
judgment  than  he,  though  they  had  not  at  their 
disposal,  as  he  had,  an  elaborate  system  for  obtaining 
information.  On  October  22nd  the  Tripoli  corre- 
spondent of  the  "  Secolo  "  telegraphed  that  things 
looked  very  ugly  among  the  oasis  Arabs  and  that  a 
great  Arab  attack  might  be  expected  at  any  moment 
from  outside.  Even  as  early  as  October  17th  the 
"  Secolo  "  published  a  long  telegram  sent  on  the 
previous  day  by  its  correspondent  Corrado  Zoli, 
and  dealing  with  the  dangerous  native  elements 
which  were  allowed,  through  General  Caneva' s 
carelessness,  to  accumulate  in  the  city,  and  which 
threatened  at  every  moment  to  bring  about  an 
explosion. 

"  To  understand  the  situation  at  this  moment," 
writes  Signor  Zoli,  "  the  reader  must  remember 
that  when  we  say  the  Arabs  have  submitted  to  the 
new  Italian  Governor,  we  allude  only  to  those 
Arabs  who  are  known  to  Hassuna  Pasha  and 
indicated  by  him  to  us  as  representing  the  native 
population  in  the  interior  of  the  walled  city  and 
in  the  immediate  neighbourhood.  But  besides 
these,  who  may  be  called  the  notables  of  the  new 
colony,  there  are  other  natives  who,  now  that  the 
terror  of  the  bombardment  is  past,  have  come 
to  the  city  from  distant  places.  Crowds  of 
ragamuffins  and  of  unknown  persons  swarm  in  the 
streets,  insinuate  themselves  into  every  nook  and 


350        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

cranny,  observe,  listen,  get  hungry,  offer  their 
services,  and  are  not  inscribed  in  any  register. 

"  Among  this  crowd  are  humble,  serviceable  men, 
such  as  one  finds  in  every  port  of  the  Levant.  But 
one  not  unfrequently  encounters  energetic  and 
silent  specimens  of  that  strange  population  of 
the  African  desert  which  knows  the  routes  and  the 
distant  oases,  people  who  deceive  but  are  not 
deceived,  people  who  are  capable  of  leaving  the 
beaten  caravan  paths  and  conveying  news  to  an 
immense  distance  with  a  rapidity  inconceivable 
to  the  European  accustomed  to  consider  the  great 
difficulties  of  travelling  in  countries  swept  bare  by 
the  Saharan  wind. 

"  That  the  Turkish  army  has  tried  to  keep  in 
some  sort  of  touch  with  the  city  through  Bedouin 
caravans  is  certain.  And  it  must  not  be  supposed 
that  all  the  arms  and  ammunition  landed  by  the 
Derna  were  put  on  camels'  backs  and  immediately 
sent  into  the  interior.  Part  of  that  cargo  may  be 
hidden  in  some  unknown  locality." 

Signor  Zoli  then  deals  with  a  very  large  caravan 
of  camels  laden  with  food-stuffs  which  had  been 
seized  on  the  previous  day  when  about  to  leave 
Tripoli  for  some  unknown  destination. 

"There  is  reason  to  believe,"  he  says,  "that  the 
forty  camels  seized  yesterday  in  the  market-place 
intended  to  convey  barley  to  detachments  of  Turkish 
soldiers  stationed  nearer  to  us  than  the  central 
Turkish  camp  at  the  foot  of  the  Gharian  mountains. 
.  .  .  The  men  of  that  arrested  caravan  will  be  care- 
fully watched,  for  it  is  feared,  and  not  without 
reason,  that  under  the  festive  and  loyal  Tripoli 
basking  in  the  full  light  of  the  sun,  tranquil  in  the 


HOW  ARABS  GOT  IN  THE  REAR   351 

protection  of  its  new  armed  population,  proud  of 
being  guarded  on  sea  by  a  long  and  imposing 
girdle  of  cruisers,  there  exists  a  subterranean 
Tripoli  whose  labyrinths  it  would  not  be  easy  to 
explore." 

Until  October  23rd  General  Caneva  was  extremely 
lax  about  letting  Arabs  or  people  who  said  that  they 
were  Arabs  pass  through  the  lines  at  any  point, 
either  to  enter  or  to  leave  the  city.  Between  Shara- 
shett  and  Henni  a  whole  company  of  Turkish  soldiers 
could  have  slipped  through  the  dense  oasis  under- 
growth at  night  without  the  sentinels  being  any  the 
wiser. 

On  October  22nd,  the  eve  of  the  "  revolt,"  I  drove 
out  to  Sharashett  with  a  colleague,  Herr  von  Gott- 
berg,  and  only  met  one  sentry  at  a  cross-roads.  We 
showed  him  our  passes  and  were  allowed  to  drive 
on  towards  Amrus.  Near  a  mosque,  at  some  distance 
outside  the  Italian  line,  we  found  a  large  number 
of  white-robed  Arabs  sitting  on  the  ground  under  the 
palm-trees.  They  had  been  engaged  in  some  dis- 
cussion before  they  saw  us,  but  were  perfectly  silent 
as  we  passed  by.  They  did  not  cast  very  pleasant 
looks  at  us,  but,  in  a  little  hamlet  which  we  passed 
somewhat  further  on,  the  crowd  of  Arabs  collected 
on  the  village  green  scowled  at  us  so  malignantly 
that  von  Gottberg  hastily  asked  me  if  I  had  brought 
my  revolver  with  me.  Of  course,  I  had  left  it  at 
home.  It  always  happens  thus  with  a  revolver. 
The  weapon  in  question  would  have  been  of  little  use 
to  me,  however,  if  those  Arabs  were  the  gentry  whom 
I  now  suspect  them  to  have  been.  Neither  of  the  two 
groups  looked  like  the  ordinary  village  assembly. 
There  was  not  enough  variety  among  them  in  the 


352        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

matter  of  age  and  physical  condition.  There  was  no 
bhnd  beggar,  no  cripple  and  no  corpulent  hodja. 
There  were  no  boys  playing  about  and  no  children. 
No  veiled  maidens  drew  water  from  the  wells. 
All  of  those  Arabs  were  determined-looking,  hardy 
men  in  the  prime  of  life,  all  save  one  vigorous  ancient 
with  a  long  grey  beard  and  a  glittering  eye  which 
transfixed  us  as  that  of  the  "Ancient  Mariner" 
transfixed  the  wedding  guest.  All  devoured  us  with 
their  looks  in  a  way  which  seemed  to  indicate  intense 
anxiety  as  well  as  intense  hate. 

In  a  palm-grove  we  found  a  youth  and  an  old  man 
— both  of  them  evidently  local  people — getting 
down  dates.  My  companion  gave  them  a  small  coin 
and  signified  that  he  would  like  to  buy  some  of  the 
fruit.  They  filled  his  hat,  and  when  he  turned  to  go 
the  youth  ran  after  him.  Von  Gottberg  thought  at 
first  that  he  wanted  more  money.  On  the  contrary, 
he  wanted  to  give  my  companion  another  hatful  of 
dates. 

The  two  large  groups  of  Arabs  may  very  possibly 
have  been  the  Turko-Arabic  force  which  slipped  in 
behind  the  backs  of  the  Italians  that  very  night  and 
cut  two  companies  of  the  Bersaglieri  to  pieces  next 
morning.  Their  arms  were  probably  inside  the 
mosque  and  the  houses. 

We  had  made  this  excursion,  my  friend  and  I,  in 
order  to  learn  the  Italian  defences  in  this  direction. 
Von  Gottberg,  who  is  a  military  man,  was  much 
exercised  in  his  mind  as  to  the  strength  of  the  Ber- 
saglieri on  the  left,  and  he  concluded  that  Sharashett 
was  covered  not  only  by  several  companies  on  the 
spot,  but  also  by  a  fairly  strong  force  stationed  at 
Amrus.    But  there  were  no  troops  at  Amrus. 

At   Sharashett   there   are   two   parallel   roads   to 


HOW  ARABS   GOT  IN   THE   REAR      353 

Amrus  and  Tagiura,  not  far  distant  from  one  another, 
and  bordered  by  luxuriant  date-palms  and  olive 
plantations.  They  join,  I  believe,  a  little  outside  of 
Sharashett. 

According  to  Signor  Bevione,  the  road  running 
along  the  sea  was  left  entirely  unguarded  because 
the  Bersaglieri  had  a  vague  impression  that  the  battle- 
ships lying  off  that  point  were  watching  it,  while  the 
fleet  understood  that  the  Bersaglieri  were  looking  after 
it.  Some  jealousy  between  the  naval  officers  and 
the  crack  infantry  regiment  may  have  been  at  the 
root  of  the  misunderstanding,  and  a  certain  amount 
of  stiffness  on  both  sides  may  have  prevented 
explanations. 

VonGottberg  and  I  found  this  road  quite  unguarded. 
It  was  apparently  dominated,  however,  by  an  Italian 
cruiser  which  was  about  a  mile  off,  but  looked  much 
nearer  on  account  of  the  clear  atmosphere  and  the 
bright  sunshine. 

Signor  Giuseppe  Bevione  thinks  that  it  was  along 
this  seashore  road  that  the  fighting  Arabs  passed 
on  their  way  during  the  night  of  the  22nd  in  order 
to  attack  the  Italian  rear.  He  thinks  that  the  four  or 
five  hundred  men  who  attempted  this  encircling 
movement  could  have  thus  gradually  passed  the 
Italian  line.  They  began  to  filter  through  two  or 
three  days  before  and  to  take  up  positions  in  the 
dense  undergrowth. 

This  statement  is  now,  he  says,  accepted  by  all 
the  Italians  (ormai  accettata  da  tutti)  owing  to  the 
fatto  gravissimo  (most  grave  fact)  that  "  on  the 
morning  of  the  23rd  the  look-out  men  on  board  the 
ships  anchored  in  the  harbour  observed  a  very  rapid 
and  unaccustomed  influx  of  Arabs  from  the  oasis 
towards  Tripoli  along  the  road  which  runs  parallel  to 


354        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

the  sea  and  which  was  then  absolutely  devoid  of 
troops.  Those  Arabs  were  the  irregulars,  who  thus 
tranquilly  completed  the  envelopment  of  our  extreme 
left  and  proceeded  to  the  posts  which  had  been 
allotted  them  in  the  rear  of  our  line." 

The  same  writer  admits  that  those  irregular  troops 
were  "  Arabs  from  the  interior  who  have  never  made 
submission  to  us.  They  have  been  enlisted  and  paid 
by  the  Turks,  as  irregular  forces  of  the  Sultan."  They 
"  were  even  perhaps  commanded  by  Turkish  officers 
dressed  in  Arab  costume.  .  .  .  When  the  Turks, 
having  immobilised  the  bulk  of  our  forces  elsewhere 
by  means  of  feigned  attacks,  commenced  a  frontal 
assault  on  our  lines  at  Sharashett,  the  Arab  detach- 
ments of  the  enemy,  which  had  succeeded  in  entering 
our  lines,  threw  themselves  against  our  rear,  and 
thus  caught  us  between  two  fires.  Nor  is  it  impossible 
that  the  desperate  resistance  against  the  reinforce- 
ments from  the  82nd  Regiment  which  was  made  by 
the  Arabs  at  the  Feschlum  cross-roads,  that  is,  in 
the  most  favourable  strategic  point,  and  which 
prevented  these  reinforcements  from  advancing, 
had  been  organised  and  commanded  by  some  dis- 
guised Turkish  officers." 

Here,  then,  we  have  the  greatest  defender  of 
General  Caneva  admitting  that  the  so-called  revolt 
of  the  oasis  Arabs  was  simply  a  successful  flank- 
ing movement  on  the  part  of  irregular  Turkish 
troops. 

What  are  we  to  say,  then,  of  those  denunciations 
even  in  the  English  Press  of  the  "  friendlies  "  who 
rose  in  the  rear  of  their  benefactors  ?  "  Kepi,"  who 
describes  this  fight  in  "  Blackwood's  "  of  December 
last,  says  that  at  Sharashett  "  a  few  of  the  Arabs 
succeeded   in   breaking  through  the   Italian  lines," 


HOW   ARABS   GOT   IN  THE   REAR       355 

and  that  this  handful  afterwards  provoked  an  in- 
surrection among  the  "  friendly  "  Arabs. 

But  the  Italians  themselves  admit  that  this  rear 
attack  was  carried  out  by  four  or  five  hundred  Arab 
soldiers  of  the  Turkish  Sultan,  who  had  been  able, 
owing  to  the  gross  carelessness  of  the  Italian  com- 
mander, to  slip  round  by  the  sea-coast.  Instead  of 
a  few  Arabs  getting  through  and  being  joined  by 
hundreds  of  friendlies,  hundreds  of  Arabs  got  through 
and  were  joined  by  a  few  friendlies. 

Where,  then,  is  the  treachery  ?  Where,  then,  is 
the  justification  for  those  tears  of  blood  v/hich  have 
been  poured  out  in  "  The  Times  "  and  elsewhere  for 
those  poor,  confiding-  Italians  treacherously  taken 
in  the  rear  by  the  peaceful  Arabs  who  had  submitted 
to  their  rule  and  accepted  bread  from  their  hands  ? 

It  would  be  expecting  too  much  from  human  nature, 
however,  to  expect  that  all  the  oasis  Arabs  should 
remain  tranquil.  They,  too,  had  their  grievances. 
There  are  well-founded  reports  of  Arab  women 
having  been  foully  ill-used  by  Italian  soldiers  ;  and, 
in  any  case,  some  excitable  oasis  Arabs  must  have 
been  carried  away  by  patriotic  and  religious  feelings 
when  they  saw  their  victorious  compatriots  from  the 
desert  amongst  them  with  rifles  in  their  hands.  A 
hundred  reasons  made  such  defections  inevitable, 
though  I  doubt  if  "  defection  "  is  the  right  word  to 
use.  Fanaticism,  the  instinct  of  imitation,  the 
certainty  that  a  decisive  Turkish  victory  was  assured, 
the  fever  of  battle  ineradicable  from  the  Arab  mind, 
the  thirst  for  loot.  One  might  as  well  try  to  keep  a 
torrent  from  flowing  downhill  as  to  keep  some  of  the 
young  oasis  Arabs  from  joining  that  band  of  their 
countrymen  which  had  just  cut  to  pieces  two  com- 
panies of  the  best  soldiers  in  Italy.    General  Caneva 


356        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

cannot  blame  them.  He  might  as  well  blame  gun- 
powder for  exploding  when  a  match  is  applied  to  it. 
It  was  his  duty  to  keep  the  match  from  getting  there, 
and  in  that  duty  he  failed  signally  and  criminally. 

Probably  some  of  those  insurgent  "  friendlies  " 
did  fire  on  the  Italian  rear  or  on  isolated  Italian 
soldiers.  They  were  shot  for  it,  and  justly.  But 
Italy  should  be  the  last  country  in  the  world  to 
raise  up  her  hands  in  horror  at  such  "  treachery." 
I  have  little  sympathy  with  Italian  revolutionists, 
but  that  vigorous  old  Syndicalist  Cipriani,  was  right 
in  exploding  with  wrath  when  somebody  spoke  in 
his  presence  of  "  Arab  treachery." 

"  Treachery,"  he  shouted,  "  what  treachery  ? 
Can  we  find  a  grosser  or  more  stupid  sophism  than 
that  of  the  Nationalists  when  they  speak  of  treachery  ? 
Ah,  perdio !  Here  it  is  a  question  of  one  country 
sending  its  soldiers,  without  any  decent  motive, 
into  the  house  of  another  people  in  order  to  make 
itself  master  there.  It  is  a  question  of  a  people  being 
forced  to  bend  the  knee  and  to  promise  obedience 
under  the  menace  of  cannon  ready  to  bombard  and  to 
exterminate  them.  What  value  has  a  promise  ex- 
torted under  such  conditions  ? 

"  The  Italian  people  should  at  least  remember 
that  when  we  had  Austria  on  our  neck  we  did  to  the 
Austrians  as  the  Arabs  do  to  us  to-day.  We  did  more. 
Austrian  spies  were  stabbed,  and  every  Austrian 
soldier  on  garrison  in  any  Italian  city  had  to  look 
well  to  his  back  or  he  would  have  a  dagger  in  it.  He 
had  to  take  very  good  care  not  to  find  himself  after 
nightfall  outside  his  barracks,  in  any  deserted  lane 
or  on  any  bridge.  If  he  did  not  take  care,  he  was  sure 
to  be  killed,  thrown  into  the  river,  stoned  to  death. 
To  such  an  extent  did  these  assassinations  go  on 


HOW  ARABS   GOT  IN  THE  REAR      357 

that  when  the  Austrian  Kaiser  saw  his  Itahan 
garrisons  return  decimated  to  the  home  country, 
year  after  year,  he  exclaimed  that  the  occupation 
of  Lombardy,  Venetia,  and  the  Vassal  dukedoms 
cost  him  more  than  a  great  [annual]  defeat  in  the 
field. 

"  Treason  on  the  part  of  the  Arabs  !  Is  not  this 
the  very  word  which  the  Aulic  Councillors  used — in 
the  name  of  His  Apostolic  Majesty — in  order  to 
condemn  to  hard  labour  and  to  death  our  own 
martyrs  ?  The  victims  of  the  Spielberg,  the  men 
hanged  at  Belfiore,  were  they  not,  forsooth,  con- 
demned for  treason  as  w^ell  as  for  high  treason  ? 
The  father  of  my  excellent  friend  Ernesta  Cassola, 
the  leader  of  the  Brescian  people  during  the  Ten 
Days — was  he  not  sentenced  for  treason-felony  ? 
But  if  Austria  condemned  those  heroes,  history 
has  glorified  them,  and  this  very  year  official  Italy 
gave  them  an  apotheosis — this  very  year,  a  short 
time  before  she  herself  went  to  Tripoli  in  order  to 
commit  there  worse  crimes  than  Austria  ever  com- 
mitted amongst  us. 

"  There  are  certain  inalienable  rights,  and  among 
them  is  the  right  of  defence  against  an  overpowering 
invader.  It  is  never  treason  to  combat  pro  aris  et 
focis,  no  matter  how  one  fights,  no  matter  what  are 
the  arae  and  foci  for  which  one  combats." 

The  attack  of  the  Arabs  upon  the  Italian  Red 
Cross  has  been  enlarged  upon  in  "  The  Times  "  as 
the  act  of  savages.  Sometimes,  however,  the  Italian 
Red  Cross  hospitals  were  practically  in  the  firing- 
line.  Early  on  the  morning  of  the  26th  I  visited  the 
Italian  line  between  Sharashett  and  Henni  while 
fighting  was  going  on  and  found  a  small  first-aid 
station,  with  several  Red  Cross  flags  waving  over  it. 


358         ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

situated  in  an  Arab  cabin  within  a  hundred  yards 
of  the  front.  An  Arab  bullet  whizzed  from  time  to 
time  past  this  hospital,  but  there  was  never  any  heavy 
fire  concentrated  on  it,  though  the  Arabs  would  have 
been  well  within  their  rights  if  they  had  attacked 
it,  for  it  should  not  have  been  there. 

It  is  true  that  a  Red  Cross  hospital  well  inside  the 
oasis  was  attacked,  but  I  am  doubtful  if  the  wild 
Arabs  who  assailed  it  had  any  idea  that  it  contained 
only  sick  and  wounded  men. 

The  flag  conveyed  little  information  to  them, 
for  some  of  the  Italian  flags  also  bear  the  cross. 
Indeed,  it  is  probable  that  the  blood-red  emblem  of 
Christianity  which  floated  over  the  roof  awoke  in 
their  memories  traditions  of  the  crusaders  ;  and  that 
they  regarded  the  surgeons  with  Red  Cross  badges 
on  their  arms  as  a  corps  of  Christian  Janissaries 
more  than  usually  fierce.  In  the  "Berliner  Tageblatt " 
(April  10),  Dr.  Goebel,  the  leader  of  the  German  Red 
Crescent  with  the  Turks  in  Tripoli,  says  that  he  and 
his  assistants  would  have  been  massacred  by  the 
Arabs  if  they  had  worn  Red  Cross  badges. 

On  the  other  hand,  I  am  prepared  to  make 
allowances  for  the  Italian  soldiers  who  several  times 
at  night  shot  Arab  women  who,  not  knowing  Italian, 
did  not  stop  when  the  sentinel  summoned  them  to 
do  so.  The  "  Corriere  d'ltalia  "  tells  of  two  women 
having  been  thus  killed  and  two  wounded  on 
October  16,  In  war  a  great  deal  of  sad  but  excus- 
able killing  of  innocent  people  is  almost  inevitable. 

An  awkward  question  for  the  Turks  is  the  question 
of  uniform.  Some  of  the  Arabs  killed  in  the  oasis 
were  found  to  be  really  Turkish  soldiers  with  Turkish 
uniforms  underneath  their  Arab  dress.  This  proves 
pretty  clearly  that  they  at  least  were  not  those  peace- 


HOW  ARABS   GOT   IN  THE   REAR       359 

ful  but  "  treacherous  "  oasis  Arabs  of  whom  we  have 
heard  so  much.  But  even  if  they  had  been  caught 
alive  in  the  rear  of  the  ItaHans,  the  latter  would  be 
justified,  according  to  the  rules  of  war,  in  shooting 
them.  It  seems  to  me,  however,  that  the  Turkish 
officers  and  soldiers  fighting  in  the  Desert  against 
the  Italians  are  quite  right  in  wearing  whatever  kind 
of  uniform  they  please.  If  a  Turkish  officer  does  not 
dress  like  the  vast  majority  of  the  men  he  commands, 
he  is  sure  to  be  singled  out  by  the  Italian  marksmen. 
He  may  even  be  mistaken  for  an  Italian  and  shot  by 
his  own  men.  Besides,  it  is  impossible  for  him  to 
renew  his  uniform  when  it  wears  out.  And  it  is 
equally  impossible  for  him  to  dress  all  his  Arabs  in 
Turkish  military  costume. 


CHAPTER    VIII 

THE  EVIDENCE  FOR  THE  MASSACRES  - 

After  what  I  had  seen  on  October  26th,  I  decided 
that  I  could  not  stay  with  an  army  which  went  in 
for  murder  on  such  a  large  scale  as  the  Italian  army, 
and  accordingly  I  determined  to  send  back  my 
papers  as  correspondent  to  General  Caneva.  I  was 
so  disgusted  with  the  massacres,  and  especially 
with  the  way  in  which  the  Italian  authorities  had 
allowed  the  sick  women  and  children  of  the  Arabs 
to  die  on  the  ground,  that  I  wrote  to  General  Caneva 
a  most  violent  letter  in  which  I  stated  that  I  refused 
to  associate  any  longer  with  "  an  army  which  is 
no  army,  but  a  gang  of  marauders  and  a  band  of 
assassins." 

On  October  28th  I  showed  this  letter  to  Mr.  Alvarez, 
the  British  Consul-General,  but  he  was  horrified  at 
the  strength  of  the  language  which  I  made  use  of, 
and  begged  me  to  modify  it.  He  promised  that  if  I 
did  so  he  would  himself  accompany  me  to  call  upon 
the  General  and  make  personal  representations  to 
him  in  regard  to  the  atrocities  of  which  I  had  been 
an  eye-witness. 

I  declined  this  offer,  as  I  foresaw  that  nothing 
good  would  come  of  it — only  a  barren  interview,  a 
vague  promise  to  make  inquiries,  and  the  certainty 
of  being  kicked  out  ignominiously,  inside  of  a  week, 
on  some  trumped-up  charge,  with  the  result  that  all 

360 


EVIDENCE   FOR  THE   MASSACRES       361 

my  subsequent  testimony  about  the  massacres  would 
be  rendered  valueless.  But  I  did  modify  the  lan- 
guage of  my  letter  to  General  Caneva.  In  fact,  I  tore 
up  the  letter  and  wrote,  in  English,  a  fresh  one,  which 
ran  as  follows  : 

Tripoli, 

October  28thy  1911. 
To  His  Excellency 

General  Carlo  Caneva, 
Commander-in-chief  of  the  Army 
of  Occupation. 

Your  Excellency  ! 

I  beg  to  return  to  Your  Excellency  the  en- 
closed papers  which  I  have  received  from  the 
Italian  military  authorities  here.  As  I  deem  it 
my  duty  to  criticise  the  treatment  of  natives  during 
the  past  few  days,  I  cannot  any  longer  continue  to 
accept  favours  from  the  authorities  whose  actions 
I  criticise. 

I  remain. 

Yours  respectfully, 

Francis  McCullagh. 

I  got  no  direct  answer  from  the  General,  but  soon 
received  a  message  from  the  censor  through  another 
correspondent  to  call  at  his  office  in  the  Castello. 
Von  Gottberg,  who  had  also  returned  his  papers, 
received  a  similar  communication.  We  both  answered 
the  censor  by  letter  in  French,  saying  very  politely 
that,  having  ceased  to  be  correspondents  accredited 
to  the  Italian  Army  of  Occupation,  we  could  no 
longer  maintain  any  official  relations  with  the  censor 
and  could  not  call  on  him  in  his  official  capacity. 


362         ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

We  thanked  him,  however,  for  all  he  had  done  for 
us  and  said  that  we  would  be  delighted  to  see  him 
as  a  private  individual  at  any  time.  If  the  Italian 
authorities  wished  to  communicate  with  us,  they 
might  do  so  through  our  respective  Consuls. 

We  received  no  answer  to  this  communication,  and 
left  a  few  days  afterwards  without  having  heard  any- 
thing further  from  the  censor.  No  attempt  was  made 
to  hasten  or  retard  our  departure,  and  no  unpleasant- 
ness was  shown  us.  All  the  Italian  correspondents 
had  evidently  heard  of  what  we  had  done,  and  one 
of  them,  Signor  Tullio  Giordana,  tried  to  argue  with 
me.  He  did  not  deny  the  truth  of  my  story,  but  he 
told  me  horrible  tales  of  Arab  cruelty  towards  the 
Bersaglieri.  On  von  Gottberg  a  more  serious  attempt 
was  made.  A  mysterious  Italian  visitor  tried  to 
arrange  through  the  German  Consul  to  have  an  inter- 
view with  him,  and  when  that  attempt  failed,  the 
stranger  called  at  the  house  of  the  German  dragoman, 
where  my  friend  was  staying.  He  asked  to  see  von 
Gottberg,  but  refused  to  send  up  his  card  or  even  to 
give  his  name  or  the  business  on  which  he  had  come. 
My  colleague  consequently  refused  to  see  him,  so 
that  he  remains  a  mystery. 

From  Malta  I  wired  an  account  of  the  massacres 
and  of  the  general  situation  to  London  ;  and  a  few 
days  after  reaching  Naples  I  found  that  this  account 
had  been  wired  back  to  the  papers  there. 

To  some  papers  my  messages  came  in  a  designedly 
exaggerated  mistranslation.  I  was  made,  for  in- 
stance, to  say  that  the  Italian  troops  went  out  killing 
all  the  blind  beggars  in  the  city.  Another  paper  sug- 
gested that  I  must  have  been  drunk  when  I  wrote 
my  Malta  despatch.  All  attacked  with  the  most 
savage   invective,   not   only   myself,   but   the   other 


EVIDENCE   FOR  THE   MASSACRES       363 

British  correspondents  who  had  dared  to  send  mes- 
sages similar  to  mine. 

Signor  GioHtti  even  asserted  that  neither  I  nor 
my  colleagues  had  ever  been  to  Tripoli  at  all,  that 
we  had  concocted  our  despatches  in  Malta.  This 
assertion  will  be  found  in  the  "  Corriere  della  Sera  " 
for  November  10th,  in  the  report  of  an  interview 
granted  by  the  Premier  to  Dr.  Christopher  Pflaum, 
correspondent  of  the  "  Deutsche  Tages  Zeitung " 
of  Berlin. 

"  During  the  entire  war,"  said  Signor  Giolitti, 
"  Italy  has  been  too  gentle  rather  than  too  severe 
and  I  can  absolutely  deny,  therefore,  the  accusa- 
tions of  cruelty  made  by  London  and  Berlin  cor- 
respondents who,  instead  of  being  at  the  front,  are 
living  quietly  in  Malta." 

This  fable  about  our  having  been  all  the  time  in 
Malta  has  since  been  repeated.  It  was  repeated  by 
Mr.  Richard  Bagot,  the  novelist,  in  a  letter  which 
was  published  in  the  "  Spectator  "  on  February  10th. 
Mr.  Bagot  asserted  that : 

"  The  journalists  and  others  who  describe  in 
such  glowing  language  Italian  cruelty  in  the 
suppression  of  the  Arab  revolt  were  many  miles 
away  from  Tripoli  during  that  suppression.  The 
few  journalists  and  other  civilians  who  were  present 
have  unanimously  testified  to  the  fact  that  no  such 
acts  of  cruelty  ever  took  place." 

I  need  hardly  say  that  Mr.  Bagot  is  mistaken.  I 
could  call  hundreds  of  witnesses  to  prove  that  I  was 
in  Tripoli  until  the  end  of  October  last. 

I  shall  only  mention  one,  Signor  Tullio  Giordana, 
the  correspondent  of  the  "  New  York  Herald  "   in 


364        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR  A   DESERT 

Tripoli.  Being  a  strong  supporter  of  this  war,  Signor 
Giordana  attacked  me  in  the  "  New  York  Herald  " 
(Paris),  November  9th,  but  he  admitted  that  I  was 
in  Tripoli  when  the  massacres  occurred,  and  that  I 
voluntarily  returned  my  papers  to  General  Caneva 
by  way  of  protest  against  those  massacres. 

Nearly  all  the  non-Italian  correspondents  who  were 
in  Tripoli  at  the  end  of  October  witnessed  those 
massacres  and  described  them.  If  we  leave  the 
Italians  out  of  account  as  being  prejudiced  witnesses, 
we  find  that  the  denials  came  in  almost  all  cases 
from  journalists,  novelists,  and  others  living  in 
Italy,  France,  and  England. 

We  have  Signor  Marconi,  Lord  Roberts,  Mr. 
Richard  Bagot,  Mr. Garvin  of  the  "Pall  Mall  Gazette," 
and  the  Duke  of  the  Abruzzi.  Luigi,  Duke  of  the 
Abruzzi,  wired  as  follows  from  Taranto  to  the  "  New 
York  American  "  : 

"  My  indignation  at  the  libellous  accusations 
levelled  against  the  Italian  troops  in  Tripoli  by 
certain  newspapers  in  New  York  is  unbounded.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  our  soldiers'  treatment  of  the 
Arabs  was  humanitarian  to  an  extreme  degree, 
their  very  kindness  to  the  Arabs  was  the  cause  of 
their  undoing.  The  conduct  of  these  Arabs  in 
turning  upon  the  Italians  and  trying  to  massacre 
them  after  having  been  received  and  succoured  on 
terms  of  friendship  and  equality  was  nothing  less 
than  base  treason.  I  hope  the  '  New  York  Ameri- 
can,' with  its  acknowledged  sympathy  for  all 
peoples  who  are  engaged  in  fighting  for  the  cause  of 
justice  and  truth,  will  place  these  facts  in  their  true 
light  before  the  great  American  public." 

I  quote  this  cablegram  in  full,  as  it  is  typical  of 


EVIDENCE   FOR  THE   MASSACRES       365 

all  the  others.  I  give  in  italics,  by  the  way,  the  words 
"  fighting  for  justice  and  truth,"  as  they  are  rather 
amusing  when  applied,  as  the  Duke  applies  them, 
to  the  proceedings  of  General  Caneva  in  Tripolitania. 
The  Duke  had  been  at  Taranto  when  the  massacres 
took  place.  Of  what  earthly  good,  then,  was  his 
evidence  even  if  he  were  ten  times  a  Duke  ? 

Of  what  value  would  such  evidence  be  in,  say,  a 
murder  trial,  especially  if  all  the  people  who  had 
been  on  the  spot  and  had  seen  the  crime  committed 
had  been  unanimous  in  fixing  the  guilt  on  one  man  ? 
Hysterical  denials  from  that  man  himself,  from  his 
relatives,  and  from  admirers  in  distant  lands 
would,  I  take  it,  have  little  effect  on  an  English 
jury. 

Prominent  among  the  journalists  who  denied  the 
massacres  is  Monsieur  Jean  Carrere,  the  Rome 
correspondent  of  the  "  Temps."  I  shall  take  his  case 
as  typical. 

Monsieur  Carrere  was  not  in  Tripoli  when  the 
massacres  occurred.  While  staying  in  Naples 
early  in  November,  on  my  return  from  Tripoli- 
tania, I  noticed  that  all  the  Italian  newspapers 
were  full  of  what  they  called  a  complete  vindi- 
cation of  Italy's  honour  and  a  crushing  exposure  of 
la  malafede,  la  ignoranza,  V  odio  of  those  English 
hirelings  of  the  Turks  who  had  accused  General 
Caneva' s  troops  of  murdering  innocent  Arabs.  The 
"  vindication  "  in  question  was  especially  written 
for  the  Italian  Press.  It  was  from  the  pen  of 
M.  Jean  Carrere,  and  it  took  the  form  of  a  long 
article  asserting,  in  most  violent  and  dogmatic  lan- 
guage, that  the  massacres  did  not  occur,  and  raking 
up  all  the  "  atrocities "  that  have  been  laid  at 
England's   door  since  the  burning  of  Jeanne  d'Arc. 


366        ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

Incidentally,  I  suppose,  we,  the  British  correspon- 
dents, were  denounced  as  liars,  perjurers,  swindlers, 
and  spies.  M.  Carrere  visited  Tripoli  some  weeks 
later,  and  is  now  the  great  authority  on  that  oasis 
"  repression,"  which  he  did  not  see. 

Another  witness  is  the  "  New  York  Herald  "  of 
Paris.  When  my  account  of  the  massacres  was 
published  in  the  "  Westminster  Gazette,"  the  editor 
of  the  "  New  York  Herald  "  wired  to  his  local  cor- 
respondent to  investigate  my  statements.  I  have 
already  pointed  out  that  this  correspondent  is  an 
Italian  jingo  who  would  certainly  have  shown  me  no 
mercy  if  what  I  had  said  was  untrue.  But  as  he  could 
not  deny  the  accuracy  of  what  I  had  written,  he 
confined  himself  to  saying  that  I  had  failed  to  take 
into  account  the  provocation  which  the  Italians 
had  received.  I  may  add  that  if  I  had  not  been  in 
the  oasis  that  day  he  would  certainly  have  wired 
that  fact  to  the  "  Herald."  It  would  have  been  easy 
to  ascertain  if  I  had  been  all  day  in  town  or  not,  as 
Tripoli  is  a  small  place  with  one  small  hotel,  wherein 
nearly  all  the  correspondents  were  at  that  time 
lumped  together.  I  refer  to  this  point  because  Mr. 
Richard  Bagot  declared  six  months  afterwards,  in 
the  "  Nation,"  that  I  had  not  been  in  the  oasis  at 
all  that  day.  This  charge  had  never  been  made 
before.  Would  it  not  have  been  made  instantly  by 
forty  Italian  correspondents  if  it  were  true  ? 

But  the  utmost  that  was  said  at  the  time  against 
my  friends  and  myself  was  that  Ave  had  not  had  the 
courage  to  go  outside  the  Italian  lines  into  the  Desert 
in  order  to  see  the  manner  in  which  the  Italian  dead 
had  been  mutilated.  Signor  Luigi  Barzini  made  this 
statement  in  the  "  Corriere  della  Sera  "  of  November 
13th,  and,  I  think,  in  the  "  Daily  Telegraph  "  of  the 


EVIDENCE   FOR  THE   MASSACRES       367 

same  date.  But,  as  I  have  already  pointed  out  in  a 
previous  chapter,  there  was  fighting  going  on  when  I 
visited  the  advanced  posts,  and  I  came  back  into 
the  oasis  and  saw  the  massacres.  Mr.  Barzini  and 
his  friends  remained  at  the  front  and  did  not  see  the 
massacres.  I  have  reasons  for  beheving  too,  that  some 
of  my  Enghsh  colleagues,  who  afterwards  tried  to 
take  up  what  they  thought  to  be  a  "  moderate  "  and 
"  judicial  "  attitude,  were  also  at  the  front  most  of 
the  time  and  saw  only  the  smallest  fraction  of  the 
slaughter  that  went  on  between  them  and  the  town. 

So  much  for  the  "  Herald  "  correspondent,  A 
third  witness  is  Mr.  Martin  Donohoe,  of  the  "  Daily 
Chronicle."  Mr.  Donohoe  was  quoted,  first  in  the 
"  Stampa  "  of  Turin  and  afterwards  all  over  Italy, 
as  saying  that  there  had  been  no  massacres  at  all. 
Great  stress  was  laid  on  his  testimony  by  the  Italian 
Press.  The  "  Corriere  della  Sera "  declared  that 
that  testimony  was  "  precious,"  that  Mr.  Donohoe  had 
rehabilitated  the  character  of  the  Italian  soldier. 
In  the  screaming  headlines  which  gave  prominence 
to  this  statement  we  were  told  that  a  truthful  English- 
man had  at  last  killed  the  whole  calumny. 

But  Mr.  Donohoe  had  left  Tripoli  before  the  date 
on  which  the  massacres  took  place  ;  and,  speaking 
on  his  behalf,  the  "  Chronicle  "  has  formally  and 
publicly  denied  that  he  made  any  such  statement  as 
that  attributed  to  him.  But  I  presume  that,  in  spite 
of  that  denial,  Mr.  Donohoe  still  continues  to  figure 
in  Italy  as  the  one  brave,  truthful  Englishman  who 
declared  that  there  had  been  no  massacre. 

Other  witnesses,  possibly,  to  the  same  effect  are 
Italians  who  represented  English  newspapers  in 
Tripoli.  Reading  these  men's  testimony  without 
knowing  their  names,  the  English  reader  might  well 


368        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR   A   DESERT 

have  been  excused  for  believing  that  a  fair  proportion 
of  EngHsh  and  American  journalists  denied  the 
massacres.  Those  Italian  representatives  of  English 
papers  would  have  been  at  once  expelled  from  Tripoli 
if  they  had  confirmed  the  reports  about  a  massacre. 
But,  to  do  them  justice,  I  do  not  think  that  this  had 
much  weight  with  them.  They  were  out  all  day 
at  the  front  where  there  was  fighting,  but  no  mas- 
sacres ;  and  if  they  saw  any  of  that  "  indiscri- 
minate slaughter  "  to  which  "  The  Times  "  corre- 
spondent refers,  they  either  looked  on  it  from  a 
different  point  of  view  from  us  or  else  were  so  enraged 
at  what  they  regarded  as  the  treachery  of  the  Arabs 
that  they  could  not  judge  the  matter  impartially. 
As  for  the  British  correspondents,  if  they  had  con- 
cealed the  truth  they  could  have  remained  in  Tripoli 
for  a  long  time,  enjoying  the  hospitality  of  officers, 
the  applause  of  patriotic  Italians  all  over  the  world. 
Their  disclosure  of  what  happened  banished  them 
not  only  from  Tripoli,  but  from  the  pleasant  climate 
of  Italy,  where  they  might  otherwise  have  continued 
to  represent  their  papers — banished  them  (if  I  may 
use  the  expression)  to  a  London  grey  with  November 
fogs. 

I  have  now  given  the  evidence  on  the  Italian  side. 
It  is  almost  entirely  the  evidence  of  absentees. 
What  have  we  on  the  other  side  ?  We  have  im- 
partial Englishmen,  Irishmen,  Scotchmen,  Germans, 
Austrians,  and  Frenchmen  who  were  all  in  Tripoli 
when  the  massacres  took  place,  and  who,  to  their 
own  regret  and  horror,  witnessed  those  massacres. 
We  have  Renter's  correspondent,  Mr.  Ellis  Ashmead- 
Bartlett.  We  have  Mr.  Grant,  a  canny  and  hard- 
headed  Londoner  of  Scotch  descent,  who,  being 
extremely   anxious    to    remain    in   Tripoli,    said    as 


EVIDENCE   FOR  THE   MASSACRES      369 

little  against  his  hosts  as  he  possibly  could,  but  felt 
that  it  would  be  a  crime  to  keep  entirely  silent. 
Then  we  have  "  The  Times "  correspondent,  the 
"  Daily  Telegraph  "  correspondent,  and  the  "  West- 
minster Gazette "  correspondent.  All  these  are 
Britishers.  In  other  words,  all  the  British  corre- 
spondents said  that  wanton  murder  had  been  com- 
mitted. 

"  The  Times  "  correspondent  did  not,  it  is  true, 
go  so  far  as  the  rest  of  us.  This  was  because  he  had 
been  at  the  front  and  had  seen  only  the  smallest 
fraction  of  the  massacres  carried  out  by  the  Italians 
in  the  oasis.  Yet  even  he  declared  that  parts  of  the 
oasis  had  been  turned  into  "  human  abattoirs  "  ; 
that  "  the  Italians  having  set  themselves  to  cow 
the  Arabs,  the  floodgates  of  blood-lust  were  opened, 
and  in  many  cases  the  men  got  beyond  control,  and 
the  innocent  suffered  with  the  guilty."  Writing  in 
the  "  Daily  Telegraph  "  of  the  innocent  oasis  Arabs, 
Mr.  Bennet  Burleigh  declared  that  "  many  unques- 
tionably have  been  wantonly  murdered." 

Yet  General  Caneva  denies  that  a  single  innocent 
Arab  was  killed  ;  while  Mr.  Richard  Bagot  tells  us 
that  "  the  most  searching  investigations  carried  out 
by  Italian  officers  and  civilians  of  the  highest  honour 
and  integrity  have  failed  to  bring  to  light  one  single 
case  in  which  any  Arab  either  has  been  ill-treated 
or  put  to  death  unless  convicted  of  treachery." 

If  this  is  true,  all  the  non-Italian  correspondents 
must  have  fabricated  the  news  which  they  sent. 
But  that  they  could  not  possibly  do  so  will  be  the 
verdict  of  any  reader  who  has  accompanied  war- 
correspondents  in  the  field.  Collective  action  by 
doctors,  by  lawyers,  or  by  the  clergymen  of  any  one 
denomination  is  possible,  but,  owing  to  the  nature 

2    B 


870        ITALY'S   WAR   FOR  A   DESERT 

of  their  calling,  collective  action  of  this  kind  by  war- 
correspondents  is  impossible.  The  great,  the  primary 
object  of  each  of  them  is  to  steal  a  march  on  the 
others.  If  one  of  them  sends  false  news  the  others 
will  lose  very  little  time  in  denouncing  him. 

Of  my  own  testimony  I  do  not  care  to  speak,  but 
my  contributions  to  the  "  Westminster  Gazette," 
reprinted  in  the  present  volume,  show  that  when  I 
arrived  in  Tripoli  it  was  with  strong  prejudices  in 
favour  of  the  Italians. 

Among  the  German  correspondents  we  have  Herr 
von  Gottberg,  a  Prussian  officer  who  has  long  been 
connected  with  the  "  Lokal  -  Anzeiger  "  and  who 
enjoys  a  high  reputation  in  Berlin  as  a  military  critic. 
In  addition  to  von  Gottberg,  we  have  five  other 
Germans,  not  local  Italians  writing  for  German 
papers,  but  Germans  permanently  connected  with  the 
greatest  organs  of  the  Press  in  the  Fatherland  and 
in  Austria-Hungary. 

Some  of  these  Germans  are  very  superior  men. 
Two  of  them  are  military  officers  ;  one  of  them, 
Herr  Krause,  is  a  Doctor  in  Philosophy.  Two  of  them 
speak  Arabic  fluently.  Besides,  there  was  the 
German  Consul,  Dr.  Tilger,  a  very  able  man,  knowing 
Italian,  Turkish,  and  Arabic,  standing  in  every  way 
head  and  shoulders  above  his  consular  colleagues, 
constantly  quoted  on  the  Continent  as  the  greatest 
authority  on  every  aspect  of  Tripolitan  life.  Dr. 
Tilger  knew  the  Italians  well ;  he  had  lived  twenty 
years  among  them.  He  also  knew  the  Arabs  well, 
and  was,  consequently,  able  to  obtain  from  Arab 
sources  particulars  of  atrocities  whereof  the  corre- 
spondents knew  nothing.  I  am  told  that  his  report, 
which  is  now  in  Berlin,  confirms  every  word  which 
I  wrote  on  the  subject  of  the  massacres  in  the  "  West- 


EVIDENCE   FOR  THE  MASSACRES      371 

minster  Gazette  "  and  the  "  Daily  News."  I  think 
that  it  goes  beyond  anything  whicli  I  wrote.  Besides 
the  testimony  of  Dr.  Tilger  we  have  that  of  his 
dragoman,  who  also  speaks  Italian,  Arabic,  and 
Turkish,  as  well  as  German,  and  who  went  about 
among  the  Arabs  on  the  days  of  the  massacre  and 
conversed  with  them. 

Among  the  French  correspondents  we  have  M. 
Cossira,  whose  evidence  I  quote  elsewhere. 

If,  as  Mr.  Richard  Bagot  and  other  apologists  of 
the  Italians  assert,  not  a  single  innocent  Arab  was 
killed  by  the  Italians,  then  the  story  of  the  massacre 
was  a  gross  libel.  The  libel  would  have  been  so  gross 
that  every  foreigner  in  Tripoli  would  have  denounced 
it.  Why  did  not  the  Italian  Government  and  the 
pro-Italian  newspapers  in  this  country  go  to  Tripoli 
itself  for  evidence  ?  Why  did  they  not  appeal  to 
the  Consular  body,  to  the  English  and  German  resi- 
dents of  Tripoli  city  ?  Why  did  they  appeal  instead 
to  people  who  had  not  been  in  Tripoli  at  the  time  ? 
Because  they  Avere  well  aware  that  all  the  foreigners 
in  Tripoli  knew  of  the  atrocities. 

If  there  had  been  no  atrocities  the  English  Consul 
in  Tripoli  would  have  said  so.  Instead  of  that,  he 
sent  to  the  Foreign  Office  a  statement  to  the  effect 
that  atrocities  had  been  committed.  The  Italian 
Press  vilified  and  abused  him  for  sending  that  state- 
ment. While  General  Caneva  was  holding  a  Te 
Deum  in  the  Cathedral  to  celebrate  his  "  victory," 
four  Italian  correspondents  —  Barzini,  Castellini, 
Piazza,  and  De  Frenzi — had  the  impertinence  to 
enter  the  British  Consulate  in  order  to  cross-examine 
the  British  Consul-General  regarding  the  statement 
in  question.  The  Consul-General  would  have  been 
justified  in  showing  them  the  door,  but  he  explained 


372        ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

that  his  statement  had  not  been  intended  for  pubUca- 
tion. 

The  telegram  regarding  this  affair  is  dated  "  Tripoli, 
November  14th,"  and  is  published  in  the  "  Corriere 
della  Sera."  It  will  be  noticed  that  the  above- 
mentioned  Italian  correspondents  make  absolutely 
no  attempt  to  deny  the  massacres.  They  only  say 
that  the  Bartlett-Davis-Grant  document  "  is  dis- 
honest inasmuch  as  it  does  not  mention  the  terrible 
facts  which  rendered  absolutely  necessary  and  urgent 
the  repression  of  the  Arab  revolt,  inasmuch  as  it 
fails  to  mention  the  greater  repressions  furnished 
by  English  Colonial  history." 

To  the  latter  part  of  this  question  the  British 
Consul-General  boldly  replied  that  "  of  those  repres- 
sions mentioned  in  English  Colonial  history,  England 
is  ashamed."  Signor  Luigi  Barzini,  who  sends  this 
despatch,  scoffs  at  the  British  representative  "  who 
said  that  he  was  ashamed  of  the  conduct  of  his  nation 
in  the  most  glorious  wars  of  conquest." 

Of  course,  this  brave  and  outspoken  Consul- 
General  has  been  sent  elsewhere  and  has  been  re- 
placed by  an  official  from  Constantinople  who  has 
been  for  the  last  three  years  at  loggerheads  with  the 
Young  Turks.  British  diplomatists  in  Paris  and 
Vienna  can  safely  scoff  at  the  present  Liberal  Cabinet, 
apologise  for  it,  refer  to  it  as  a  stop-gap.  Sir  Edward 
Grey  promotes  them.  But  let  a  British  Consul- 
General  say  a  brave  and  honest  word  which  is  not 
only  the  very  essence  of  Liberalism,  but  which  also 
represents  the  opinions  of  ninety-nine  per  cent  of 
the  Conservatives  in  these  Islands — Sir  Edward  Grey 
takes  fright  immediately,  yields  to  Italian  remon- 
strances, and,  in  a  panic,  recalls  him. 

This  argument  between  the  Italian  correspondents 


EVIDENCE   FOR   THE    MASSACRES      373 

and  the  British  Consul-General  was  on  the  spot,  in 
Tripoli  itself,  and  it  will  be  noticed  that  there  in 
Tripoli  the  Italians  make  no  attempt  to  say, — as 
Mr.  Richard  Bagot  and  others  far  from  the  scene 
are  so  ready  to  say, — that  not  a  single  Arab  was 
wrongfully  put  to  death.  In  Tripoli  city  the  Italian 
defence  is:  (1)  "The  Arabs  attacked  us  treacherously," 
(2)  "  You  British  did  worse  things  in  your  Colonial 
wars."  To  the  second  argument  I  would  answer 
that  two  wrongs  do  not  make  a  right.  To  the  first 
I  would  reply  that  if  the  Arabs  did  wrong,  the  Italians 
should  not  have  done  wrong.  But  the  Arabs  did 
not  make  a  treacherous  attack  on  the  Italian  rear. 
I  hope  that  I  have  already  made  this  point  clear. 

Thus  all  the  members  of  the  local  Consular  corps 
knew  that  atrocities  were  committed.  All  the  non- 
Italian  correspondents  have  borne  witness  to  those 
atrocities. 

I  might  add  that  all  the  evidence  I  adduce  to 
prove  the  massacres  comes  from  men  who  were  con- 
nected with  the  Italian  army.  All  the  British  and 
German  correspondents  I  have  mentioned  had  been 
favoured  with  passes  from  General  Caneva.  Con- 
sequently they  were  likely,  not  to  malign  the  Italian 
army,  but  to  close  their  eyes  to  that  army's  faults  and 
to  develop  a  hatred  of  the  Arabs.  This  is  always  the 
case  in  war,  especially  in  war  with  a  savage  and 
fanatical  enemy.  A  correspondent  is  naturally 
inclined  to  believe  anything  bad  of  the  foe,  to  excuse 
any  harshness  on  the  part  of  his  hosts.  On  this 
account  I  purposely  refrain  from  quoting  Turkish 
testimony  against  the  Italians  or  even  the  testimony 
of  Englishmen  on  the  Turkish  side. 

A  word  in  conclusion  about  the  alleged  Arab 
atrocities.     It  is  not  impossible,  of  course,  that  the 


374         ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

Arabs,  furious  at  the  massacre  of  their  own  kinsmen 
by  the  ItaHans,  should  retahate  by  torturing  and 
mutilating  such  of  the  invaders  as  fell  into  their 
hands.  Nevertheless,  there  are  some  points  about 
this  story  which  need  to  be  cleared  up.  It  is  not  suf- 
ficient that  all  the  Italian  and  some  of  the  English 
correspondents  try  to  make  our  hair  stand  on  end 
by  blood-curdling  stories  of  the  mutilations  inflicted 
on  the  Italian  dead.  Some  correspondents  are  too 
prone  to  write  what  will  please  the  army  to  which 
they  are  attached,  so  that  the  censor  will,  by  way  of 
quid  pro  quo,  let  them  have  special  interviews  with 
the  army  chiefs  and  permit  them  to  get  out  their  news 
first.  And  foreign  business-men,  settled  in  a  place 
like  Tripoli,  are  very  often  found  romping  into  the 
Press  in  frenzied  support  of  the  invaders,  not  because 
they  love  justice,  but  because  they  want  to  stand 
well  with  the  new-comers,  and  to  benefit  commercially. 
The  permament,  forty-years-in-the-country  man 
of  business  is  often  a  representative  of  doubtful 
value  to  a  newspaper.  When  he  does  happen  to 
remember  the  name  of  the  paper  to  which  he  is 
"  accredited  "  and  devotes  a  few  moments  to  the 
work  of  dictating  a  hasty  cablegram  to  it,  that 
cablegram  is  not  unlikely  to  be  influenced,  uncon- 
sciously of  course,  by  his  business  pre-occupations. 
Without  laying  themselves  open  to  any  accusation 
of  partiality  or  boycott,  the  Italians  could  ruin  any 
business-man  in  Tripolitania  who  did  not  actively 
take  their  part.  His  caravans  would  "  dry  up  " 
mysteriously,  his  customers  would  fall  away,  he 
would  find  himself  high  and  dry  above  the  currents 
of  local  commerce.  Yet  such  men  sometimes  serve 
not  one  newspaper  but  many.  Next  to  the  craze  for  a 
"scoop, ' '  the  craze  for  having ' '  our  own  correspondent ' ' 


EVIDENCE   FOR  THE   MASSACRES       375 

in  every  corner  of  the  world  is  the  bane  of  modern 
journalism.  This  latter  craze  necessitates  very  often 
the  employment  of  business-men,  who  differ  from 
real  "  special  correspondents  "  in  this,  that  (1)  they 
have  first  got  to  consider  their  business  interests, 
and  (2)  they  have  got  to  remain  behind  and  face 
the  music. 

We  should  not,  therefore,  attach  too  much  im- 
portance to  reports  of  Arab  atrocities  which  are 
sent  from  Tripoli  by  correspondents  who  have 
identified  themselves  with  the  Italians.  And,  in 
the  present  instance,  as  I  have  already  pointed  out, 
these  reports  are  open  to  grave  suspicion. 

On  October  28th  the  Italians  evacuated  El  Henni 
after  having  buried  there  the  dead  who  had  died 
in  the  battles  of  the  23rd  and  26th.  When  they 
returned  to  El  Henni  a  month  later,  on  November 
26th,  they  found  that  some  of  the  dead  bodies  had 
been  disinterred.  Now,  even  if  we  admit  that  the 
Arabs  disinterred  the  bodies  in  order  to  strip  off  the 
clothes,  as  they  might  very  likely  do,  there  is  nothing 
so  very  terrible  in  that.  The  Arabs  are  a  very  poor 
people,  to  whom  cloth,  buttons,  and  buckles  are 
pearls  of  great  price.  I  remember  how  an  Arab 
soldier,  with  whom  I  travelled  in  the  interior  of 
Morocco,  saved  up  my  empty  tins  (which  had  con- 
tained tinned  meats)  in  order  to  make  cups  of  them. 
And,  as  Mr.  Ernest  N.  Bennett  puts  it,  "  if  clothes 
and  boots  are  badly  needed  by  the  living,  why  on 
earth  bury  them  in  the  ground  ?  "  Even  if  the  corpses 
were  afterwards  mutilated,  this  is  certainly  not 
worse  than  the  wholesale  murder  of  innocent  people  in 
which  the  Italians  indulged.  But  the  Italians  declare 
that  the  corpses  in  question  were  not  those  of  soldiers 
who  had  been  buried,  but  those  of  soldiers  who  had 


376        ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

been  captured  alive  and  then  tortured  to  death. 
They  describe  the  expression  of  agony  on  the  faces, 
they  tell  how  the  eyelids  of  one  corpse  were  sewn  up  ; 
how  another  soldier  had  evidently  been  buried 
alive  and  a  third  crucified.  They  brought  personally 
conducted  parties  of  foreign  journalists  to  see  these 
gruesome  sights.  They  had  them  photographed. 
They  published  in  English,  and  probably  in  other 
European  languages,  long  illustrated  descriptions  of 
this  find. 

I  felt,  long  before,  that  some  such  discovery  was 
coming.  Even  on  October  26th  I  heard  the  Italians 
describe  the  mutilations  which  they  did  not  discover 
until  a  month  later.  Considering  the  extraordinary 
craftiness  and  cunning  which  one  sometimes  finds  in 
the  character  of  the  Sicilian  and  the  Neapolitan,  and 
which  I  noticed  myself  in  Tripoli,  we  should  not  be 
too  eager  to  credit  the  lurid  accounts  of  Arab  ferocity 
with  which,  by  way  of  counterblast,  the  Italian  Press 
has  been  deluged. 

Moreover,  it  is  extremely  doubtful  if  the  particular 
mutilations  which  the  Italian  correspondents  describe 
with  such  gusto  and  in  such  detail, — it  is  extremely 
doubtful  if  the  sewing  up  of  the  eyelids,  etc.,  would 
remain  after  a  month  of  hot  rainy  weather.  Decom- 
position would  set  in  very  rapidly  and  would  be 
assisted  in  its  work  of  destruction  by  the  dogs, 
carrion-birds  and  beasts  of  prey.  The  "  Daily  Mail  " 
correspondent  in  Tripoli  tells  us  of  "  the  expression 
of  agony  on  the  faces  " — on  the  faces  of  corpses  that 
had  been  exposed  for  a  month  in  such  a  climate ! 
Is  not  this  ridiculous  ? 

I  have  already  spoken  of  "  The  Times  "  military 
correspondent  in  Tripoli.  I  have  shown  how  pro- 
Italian  he  has  been.     Well,  writing  in  "  Blackwood's 


EVIDENCE   FOR   THE    MASSACRES       377 

Magazine  "  for  January,  1912,  this  correspondent 
thinks  that  the  accounts  of  the  Arab  atrocities  have 
been  "  overstated."  ..."  Men  who  are  said  to 
have  been  buried  aHve  are  probably  Itahan  corpses 
that  the  Turks  hastily  interred  for  sanitary  reasons. 
It  is  quite  possible  that  some  of  the  so-called  mutila- 
tions were  due  to  the  packs  of  dogs  which  infest  the 
oasis.  Moreover,  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  the  evidences 
of  brutality,  as  described  in  the  Italian  journals, 
could  have  survived  in  the  minuteness  of  the  detail 
given,  after  the  exposure  of  a  month  of  North  African 
sun  and  torrential  rain." 

"  The  Times  "  correspondent  refers  to  "  the  packs 
of  dogs  which  infest  the  oasis."  Owing  to  the  de- 
struction of  practically  all  the  houses  in  the  oasis 
there  must  have  been  many  such  packs,  and  they 
must  have  been  starving.  Nothing  is  more  likely 
than  that  they  scraped  away  the  sand  which  lightly 
covered  the  Italian  corpses.  In  the  "  Secolo  "  of 
November  29th  we  find  evidence  in  support  of  this 
theory.  It  is  taken  from  the  "  Giornale  di  Sicilia," 
whose  correspondent  in  Tripoli  gives  the  following 
description  of  the  burial  of  a  Red  Cross  soldier  : — 

"  I  entered  the  [Mohammedan]  cemetery  with 
Bedi  Farug,  an  Arab  fisherman  and  a  friend  of 
mine.  .  .  .  Suddenly  my  attention  was  attracted 
by  a  tomb  which  seemed  to  be  new  and  on  which  lay 
some  palm-fronds,  still  green.  A  little  tablet  on 
the  tomb  bore  this  inscription  in  Italian  : 

"  Einilio  Matteo  Sibille,  soldato  delta  Croce  Rossa 
Italianai  morto  il  15  ottobre  1911." 

"  Bedi  Farug  noticed  my  surprise,  and  being  a 
species  of  living  newspaper  and  knowing  every- 
thing which  happens,  he  said  to  me,  '  This  was  a 


378         ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 

little  soldier.  He  died  [of  illness]  while  attending 
to  his  brethren.  A  little  before  his  death  he  re- 
ceived a  letter  from  his  mother.  Another  soldier 
sat  down  by  his  bedside  and  read  the  letter  for 
him.  Death  was  then  near.  The  little  Italian  soldier's 
eye  was  dim,  but  his  heart  was  alive.  He  was 
troubled  by  the  words  of  his  mother,  who  had  not 
known  that  he  was  ill  and  who  said  that  she  ex- 
pected him  to  come  back  to  his  native  mountains 
in  good  health  and  with  the  satisfaction  of  having 
done  his  duty." 

The  soldier  died,  but  his  companions  "  did  not 
wish  to  bury  him  on  the  seashore  where  those  horrible 
dogs  scrape  away  the  earth  and  tear  the  corpses  to 
pieces  "  (ma  poi  non  volevano  seppellirlo  alia  spiaggia 
dove  quegli  orribili  cani  scavano  le  fosse  e  fanno 
scempio  dei  cadaveri.) 

The  local  Mohammedan  Mollah  who  had  taken  an 
affection  for  the  sick  soldier,  who  was,  by  the  way, 
a  Piedmontese,  begged  the  Italians  to  "  bear  the 
ashes  of  your  comrade  into  our  burial-ground  of 
Dab-il-si-Did.  You  can  always  find  it  there  if  ever 
you  want  to  take  it  back  to  Italy." 

The  soldiers,  we  are  told,  "  were  very  glad  at  this, 
and  thanked  the  Mollah."  They  then  buried  their 
comrade  in  the  Moslem  burying-ground.  "  At  the 
foot  of  the  tomb  some  little  flowers  had  been  planted. 
'  These,'  said  Bedi  Farug,  with  simplicity,  '  have 
been  put  there  by  our  women  ! '  " 

I  only  quote  this  to  show  that,  in  the  opinion  of 
the  natives,  corpses  buried  in  the  sand,  as  the  Italian 
corpses  at  Henni  were  buried,  are  pretty  certain  to 
be  mangled  by  dogs.  If  it  is  so  at  ordinary  times, 
when  the  dogs  are  fed,  what  must  it  be  when,  owing 


EVIDENCE   FOR  THE  MASSACRES       379 

to  the  massacre  or  the  flight  of  their  owners,  hundreds 
of  dogs  are  running  about  masterless  and  half- 
starved  ?  Moreover,  there  is  another  danger.  There 
is  danger  of  corpses  buried  in  the  sand  being  un- 
covered by  the  torrential  rains  of  the  rainy 
season.  Among  the  villages  in  the  oasis  are  a 
number  of  Moslem  burial-grounds  which  have  in 
many  cases  been  walled  in  to  save  the  graves 
from  the  swift  water-courses  formed  in  November. 
Now,  in  last  November  the  rainy  season  was  so 
particularly  rainy  that  the  water  rushed  through 
part  of  the  city  in  a  small  river,  pouring  into  the  sea 
near  the  Castello.  And  it  was  after  this  that  the 
bodies  were  found.  And  once  the  water  had  uncovered 
them,  the  dogs  would  certainly  not  leave  them  alone. 
Then  the  Italians  found  them  and  raised  an  outcry 
in  Europe  in  order  to  excuse  their  own  massacres 
towards  the  end  of  October.  From  the  Tripoli 
correspondent  of  one  prominent  London  paper  came 
a  very  naive  telegram  : — "  It  was  these  mutilations 
which  caused  the  Italian  reprisals  in  the  oasis  on 
October  23rd-27th."  But  on  October  23rd-27th 
the  Italians  were  in  occupation  of  El  Henni  and  had 
no  corpses  "  on  view,"  so  to  speak.  They  buried  all 
their  dead  before  retreating.  When  they  returned 
they  found  the  corpses  of  their  soldiers  hanging  from 
the  trees,  whereupon  they  assured  the  English  corre- 
spondents that  it  was  on  account  of  those  Arab 
atrocities  that  they  had  murdered  thousands  of  oasis 
Arabs  a  month  previously  !  The  whole  thing  is  a 
strange  muddle,  and  I,  at  least,  cannot  make  sense 
of  it.  I  can  very  well  understand,  however,  why 
the  Italians  "  find "  so  many  of  their  comrades 
"  crucified."  "  Crucified  "  is,  as  I  have  already  pointed 
out,  a  good  word.      It  appeals  to  the  prejudices  of 


380         ITALY'S  WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 

Christianity.  It  will  rouse  England  and  America. 
Thus  the  Italian  leaders  make  use  of  the  Christianity 
in  which  they  do  not  believe,  first  in  order  to  make 
their  own  soldiers  drunk  with  religious  fanaticism  ; 
secondly,  in  order  to  excite  Europe  against  the  Turks 
and  Arabs.  It  is  a  clever  business,  well  worthy  of 
the  countrymen  of  Machiavelli. 

In  the  same  way  their  reported  adoption  of  Arab 
children,  their  alleged  kindness  to  Bedouin  babies 
found  deserted  in  the  oasis,  and  all  the  other  acts  of 
kindness  which  have  been  so  trumpeted  by  the  Roman 
and  Milanese  Press,  are  simply  instances  of  clever 
Press  "  business."  Until  the  end  of  October,  the 
Arab  children  in  the  oasis  were  treated  by  the  Italians 
as  if  they  were  dogs.  I  have  elsewhere  shown  how 
at  least  one  such  child  was  left  on  the  ground  to  die. 
The  Italian  soldiers  had  no  more  compassion  on 
those  children  than  they  would  have  had  on  young 
vipers.  But  once  an  outcry  was  raised  about  their 
barbarity,  there  was  a  sudden  change.  The  word 
went  forth  early  in  November  that  soldiers  were  to 
be  photographed  with  "  rescued  "  Arab  babies  on 
their  knees,  and  that  long,  sentimental  tales  were  to 
be  attached  to  the  photographs.  In  this  way  the 
English  and  Germans,  with  their  curious  and  inex- 
plicable affection  for  these  dirty  brats,  would  be  won 
over,  would  be  got  to  believe  that  the  Italians  were 
humane,  were  bubbling  over  with  the  milk  of  human 
kindness. 

Facile  Italian  pens  produced  in  abundance  inter- 
minable stories  of  heroic  Bersaglieri,  who  had,  at 
the  risk  of  their  lives,  rescued  Turkish  infants  and 
adopted  them.  Lachrymose  tales  were  circulated 
of  rough  bluejackets  who  shared  their  food  with 
Arab  mites  whom  they  had  picked  up  in  the  desert. 


EVIDENCE   FOR  THE  MASSACRES      381 

Photographs  were  produced  by  the  score  showing 
black  children  seated  on  the  knees  of  Italian  soldiers, 
while,  in  the  background,  officers  and  Red  Cross 
nurses  tried  desperately  hard  to  "look  pleasant." 
London  newspaper  offices  were  deluged  with  these 
"proofs"  of  Italian  benignity.  All  this  is  humbug. 
It  is  manufactured  stuff,  turned  out  to  order  for 
the  English,  American  and  German  market.  The 
soldiers  would  sooner  wring  the  necks  of  these  black 
children  than  play  with  them  or  seat  them  on  their 
knees. 

Besides,  even  if  this  sudden  affection  were  genuine,  I 
would  have  nothing  to  say  in  favour  of  it.  If  the 
Germans  desolated  Yorkshire  with  fire  and  sword,  no 
Yorkshireman  would  feel  flattered  in  the  least  if  he 
saw  in  "  Die  Woche  "  photographs  of  German  soldiers 
with  "  adopted  "  Bradford  children  on  their  knees. 


CHAPTER  IX 

CONCLUSION 

THE  CHURCH,   THE  SOCIALISTS  AND  THE  WAR 

The  last  chapter  of  this  ill-omened  Italian  adventure 
has  yet  to  be  written.  God  grant  that  anarchy  and 
civil  war  may  not  write  it  in  characters  of  blood  and 
flame  within  the  fair  borders  of  Italy  herself. 

For  it  is  only  too  probable  that  the  Socialists  and 
Terrorists,  in  the  production  of  whom  Italy  enjoys 
such  an  ill  repute,  will  eventually  be  the  only  gainers 
by  this  war.  Even  if  General  Caneva  wins  a  military 
triumph,  the  raid  will  nevertheless  prove  a  disaster, 
for  Tripolitania  will  always  be  a  burden  to  its  owners, 
and  in  a  few  years,  perhaps  in  a  few  months,  the 
revolutionist  will  be  able  to  say  with  perfect  truth  : 
"  Didn't  I  tell  you  so  ?  " 

And  when  Italy  recovers  from  her  present  debauch 
of  jingoism  and  blood,  she  will,  I  am  afraid,  turn  for 
consolation  to  the  man  with  the  red  flag.  That 
sinister  personage  is  the  only  Italian  who  has  kept 
his  head  during  the  sanguinary  revel,  the  only 
man  who  has  told  the  exact  truth,  and  given  a 
perfectly  just  and  accurate  account  of  the  situation. 
Perhaps  there  is  one  other  Italian  who  is  not  blind 
to  what  is  going  on  and  who,  remembering  the  fate 
of  his  father,  shudders  when  he  hears  the  cries  of 
"  victory."    That  man  is  the  King  of  Italy,  who  was, 

382 


CONCLUSION  383 

I  am  told,  greatly  averse  to  the  present  adventure, 
but  who  must  now,  of  course,  as  a  constitutional 
monarch,  behave  as  if  he  approved  of  it.  There  is 
still  another  Italian  who  has  not  lost  his  head,  but, 
occupying  as  he  does  an  extraterritorial  position. 
His  Holiness  can  scarcely  be  regarded  as  an  Italian 
at  all. 

To  the  gentleman  with  the  bomb  belongs,  therefore, 
the  sole  credit  of  having  remained  cool  and  sane.  The 
"  Avanti  "  has  published  a  caricature  showing  a 
ward  in  a  fever-hospital.  The  beds  of  all  the  political 
parties  are  occupied  by  delirious  patients  whose 
temperature  is  somewhere  near  boiling-point.  One 
bed  alone  is  unoccupied,  that  of  the  revolutionists. 
Any  one  who  has  studied  the  revolutionary  periodicals 
of  Italy  since  September  last  must  admit  that  this 
boast  is  fully  justified.  While  all  the  clerical  and 
monarchist  papers  have  been  indulging  in  the  wildest 
dreams  of  conquest,  the  "  Avanti  "  has  pointed  out 
that  "  the  day  will  soon  come  when  by  far  the 
greater  part  of  the  literature  of  this  period  will  seem 
brutal  and  barbarous  even  to  those  who  now  pro- 
duce it  in  a  state  of  violent  excitement  and  jingoist 
frenzy  and  to  those  who  devour  it  and  excite  them- 
selves by  it.  Like  all  kinds  of  intoxication,  this 
intoxication  of  jingoism — more  especially  this  in- 
toxication of  jingoism — leaves  the  brain  confused 
and  obtuse  and  the  mouth  bitter. 

"  When  sobriety  returns,  Italian  '  civilisation  ' 
will  look  at  herself  in  the  glass,  and  will  perhaps  be 
horror-stricken  at  her  own  appearance.  When  that 
day  comes  we,  at  least,  can  say  that  we  did  not 
encourage  our  country  in  her  mad  debauch,  that  we 
did  not  urge  her  on  to  fresh  excesses."  On  October  1st 
the  "Avanti"  denounced  the  war-fever  as  a  case  of 


384        ITALY'S    WAR    FOR    A    DESERT 

"  colossal,  collective  aberration,"  and  said  that  Italy 
had  been  made  drunk  with  the  crude  alcohol  of  a 
"bastard  patriotism."  ^ 

Every  word  of  this  is  justified.  Before  the  raid 
the  Socialist  Press  pointed  out,  day  after  day,  with 
the  most  cold  and  deadly  logic,  that  the  contemplated 
occupation  of  Tripolitania  was  a  mistake  from 
every  point  of  view,  that  the  new  territory  would 
not  attract  Italian  emigration,  that  it  would  always 
be  a  burden  on  the  Roman  Exchequer,  that,  before 
providing  railways,  schools,  and  water-works  for 
the  Libyan  desert,  the  Italian  Government  should 
provide  those  necessities  for  large  areas  in  the  home 
country  which  were  without  them. 

When  General  Caneva  massacred  the  oasis  Arabs 
who  possessed  fire-arms,  the  "  Avanti  "  showed  in 
the  most  convincing  manner  that  Caneva  himself  had 
erred  in  failing  to  disarm  the  natives ;  and  it  showed 
that  at  Benghazi,  General  Briccola  had  had  no  trouble 
with  his  "  friendlies  "  owing  to  the  fact  that  he  had 
adopted  on  the  day  he  landed  the  simple  precaution 
of  collecting  their  rifles  from  them. 

In  the  same  way  the  "  Avanti  "  was  the  only 
paper  in  Italy  to  point  out  how  trifling  were  the 
Italian  successes.  While  even  the  great  "  Corriere 
della  Sera  "  was  working  itself  into  paroxysms  of 
excitement  over  the  ridiculous  bombardment  of 
Tripoli,  the  "  Avanti  "  coldly  pointed  out  the  weak- 
ness of  the  Turkish  batteries  there  and  the  impos- 
sibility of  any  serious  resistance.  In  short,  the 
jingo  Press  reminded  one  of  nothing  so  much  as  a 
hilarious  reveller  whose  tongue  has  been  loosened, 
whose  imagination  has  been  inflamed,  and  whose 
reasoning   powers   have   been  impaired  by  a   large 

*  In  the  appendix  I  give  a  specimen  of  that  alcohol. 


CONCLUSION  385 

dose  of  some  crude  intoxicant.  The  Socialist  and 
Anarchist  Press,  on  the  other  hand,  reminded  one 
all  along  of  a  sharp,  cool,  cynical  lawyer  with  all 
his  wits  about  him.  In  the  conflict  between  the  two 
the  position  of  the  imperialist  was  both  ludicrous 
and  pathetic.  ^ 

Nobody  would  deplore  more  than  myself  the 
triumph  of  the  revolutionists  in  Italy  and  the  over- 
throw of  the  monarchy,  but  it  is  undeniable  that 
this  Tripoli  adventure  tends  to  bring  us  nearer  to 
such  a  consummation.  The  revolutionists  know 
that,  though  their  friends  are  now  few,  the  pendulum 
is  sure  to  swing  their  way  before  long.  It  is  signi- 
ficant that  they  continually  tell  of  Lloyd  George 
having  been  once  compelled  to  escape  in  a  police- 
man's clothes  from  a  pro-war  mob,  and  being  now 
the  most  powerful  Minister  in  the  British  Cabinet. 
It  would  be  more  to  the  point,  however,  if  they  dwelt 
on  the  almost  successful  revolution  in  Russia  which 
followed  the  Tzar's  unfortunate  Manchurian  war. 
Indeed,  the  probabilities  are  that,  for  the  future, 
every  unsuccessful  campaign  waged  by  a  Continental 

1  In  the  "  Avanti  "  of  October  1st  the  reader  will  find  a  most  able 
and  eloquent  denunciation  of  the  raid.  "Some  people  tell  us,  '  says 
this  organ,  "that  this  will  not  be  really  a  war  at  all,  that  there  wall 
be  a  few  shots,  a  blockade  by  the  fleet,  the  simple  landing  of  an  army 
corps,  and  that  all  will  then  be  over.  And  perhaps  this  thought  is 
behind  the  whole  enterprise  ;  doubtless  this  conviction  led  to  the  war 
being  prepared  and  decided  upon.  By  exalting  the  prowess  of  Italy's 
military  forces  and  ridiculously  under-estimating  the  Turkish  forces, 
our  rulers  have,  as  it  were,  administered  morphia  to  a  section  of 
public  opinion  in  this  country  and  have  rendered  it  insensible  to  the 
direct  and  indirect  perils  of  the  situation.  .  .  .  But  we  consider  it  our 
duty  to  warn  the  working  classes  of  the  dangers  that  await  them.  We 
invite  them  to  strengthen  their  organisations  in  order  to  make  head- 
way against  the  forces  which  threaten  the  life,  the  future,  the  liberty 
of  the  country.  Let  once  this  aggression  succeed  and  those  forces, 
proud  of  having  inveigled  the  Government  and  the  nation  into  this 
military  adventure,  will  be  convinced  that  even  in  the  matter  of 
domestic  politics  they  can  safely  carry  out  their  imperialist  and  jingo 
programme," 

2  C 


386        ITALY'S    WAR    FOR    A    DESERT 

State  will  be  invariably  followed  by  a  revolutionary 
upheaval  in  that  State  itself. 

As  for  the  position  of  the  Church  in  this  war,  the 
Vatican  is  impartial  and  even  opposed  to  the  conflict, 
but  unfortunately  a  great  number  of  the  bishops 
and  priests,  acting  on  their  own  responsibility,  have 
warmly  approved  of  it. 

The  Government  naturally  tries  to  make  as  much 
as  possible  out  of  this  clerical  approbation  so  as  to 
arouse  the  religious  fanaticism  of  its  soldiers  and  get 
as  much  fighting  out  of  them  as  possible.  Efforts 
have  accordingly  been  put  forth  to  make  this  most 
unholy  raid  look  like  a  holy  war,  a  Crusade,  ap- 
proved of  by  Mother  Church,  against  the  Infidel. 
The  campaign  was  begun  by  vainglorious  talk  about 
the  substitution  of  the  Cross  for  the  Crescent.  Bishops 
took  this  same  unfortunate  line  in  their  pastorals ; 
and  postcards  printed  in  Italy  bear  the  picture  of  a 
Bersagliere  planting  a  flag  with  a  cross  on  it  upon 
the  minaret  of  a  mosque.  There  is  something  very  un- 
pleasant in  the  sight  of  religion  being  thus  used  for 
the  benefit  of  a  marauding  expedition,  engineered 
by  men  who  in  very  many  cases  have  no  religion 
themselves.  In  the  Franciscan  Church  at  Tripoli 
I  have  seen  officers  strolling  about  the  building  while 
Mass  was  being  said,  admiring  the  architecture, 
pointing  to  the  pictures,  but  not  genuflecting  before 
the  high  altar,  and  even  turning  their  back  on  it 
sometimes,  to  the  scandal  of  the  whole  congregation. 
I  have  seen  them  laugh  and  chat  as  not  even  a  party 
of  Cook's  tourists  would  have  done  in  an  Italian 
church,  yet  those  are,  forsooth,  the  men  who  try, 
for  military  reasons,  to  excite  the  private  soldier 
with  religion  before  sending  him  into  action.  Their 
conduct  is  worse  than  that  of  the  Russian   officers 


CONCLUSION  387 

in  the  Caucasus,  who,  according  to  Tolstoi,  used  to 
prime  their  Cossacks  with  drink  before  sending  them 
out  to  kill  people. 

Some  high  ecclesiastics  seem  to  have  been  jingoist 
either  through  conviction  or  else  because  they  suc- 
cumbed to  the  social  influences  brought  to  bear  on 
them  by  Signor  Pacelli,  the  head  of  the  Banco  di 
Roma,  and  himself  a  strong  Catholic. 

Speaking  at  an  aristocratic  wedding-breakfast 
in  Rome — at  a  breakfast  which  followed  the  marriage 
of  the  Princess  Odescalchi — Cardinal  Vannutelli 
referred  to  a  victory  gained  over  the  Turks  by  Prince 
Eugene  of  Savoy  and  then  used  the  following  words  : 

"  To-day  Italy  completes  her  mission  of  civil- 
isation, for  at  Tripoli  she  plants  the  Cross  on  a 
land  where  the  Crescent  once  waved." 

His  Eminence  concluded  by  hoping  that  Italy 
would  complete  her  task  in  Tripolitania. 

Next  day  the  "  Osservatore  Romano,"  the  official 
organ  of  the  Vatican,  repudiated  this  ill-advised 
speech  in  the  following  note  : 

"  No  small  number  of  Catholic  newspapers  and 
several  ecclesiastical  and  political  speakers  who 
have  recently  discussed  the  Italo-Turkish  con- 
flict, have  expressed  themselves  in  such  a  way  as 
to  lead  the  public  to  believe  that  the  war  is  a  holy 
war,  undertaken  in  the  name  and  with  the  support 
of  the  Christian  religion  and  of  the  Church. 

"  We  are  authorised,  however,  to  declare  that 
the  Holy  See  is  not  responsible  for  such  interpre- 
tations. Moreover,  wishing  to  remain  outside 
the  present  conflict,  it  cannot  support  it  and  even 
deplores  it." 


888       ITALY'S    WAR    FOR    A    DESERT 

Again,  when  a  "  patriotic  "  subscription  was  got 
up  for  the  troops  in  Tripoli,  the  Pope  forbade  the 
bishops  to  contribute  to  it  and  the  bishops  forbade 
the  priests.  The  Vatican  also  condemned  the  preach- 
ing of  anti-Islamic  sermons  in  the  churches,  and  it 
seems  to  have  done  its  best,  in  every  way,  to  rescue 
the  clergy  from  the  jingo  wave. 

Signor  Pacelli,  of  the  Banco  di  Roma,  is  a  friend 
of  Baron  Sonnino,  the  Conservative  leader  and  the 
proprietor  of  the  clericalist  "  Giornale  d'  Italia." 
Consequently,  towards  the  middle  of  last  year,  the 
"  Giornale  d'  Italia "  opened  a  campaign  against 
Turkey  in  the  name  of  Christianity  and  the  Higher 
Patriotism  of  the  Italian  people.  And,  according 
to  the  frequent  practice  under  such  circumstances 
of  many  so-called  religious  papers  edited  by  laymen, 
it  became  out-and-out  jingo,  it  outdid  the  mili- 
tarists themselves  in  its  worship  of  brute  force,  and 
it  covered  with  vulgar  abuse  every  foreign  corre- 
spondent w^ho  ventured  to  differ  from  it. 

Notwithstanding,  therefore,  the  impartial  attitude 
of  the  Pope,  and  the  opposition  to  the  war  of  one 
Catholic  newspaper  in  Milan,  the  Church  in  Italy 
will  probably  suffer  in  the  reaction  which  will  per- 
haps take  place  after  this  war.  And  no  doubt  it 
will  suffer  more  on  account  of  calumnies  than  on 
account  of  true  accusations  regarding  the  support 
which  individual  ecclesiastics  have  given  the  jingoes. 
For  both  the  militarists  and  the  anti-militarists 
stoop  to  falsehood  in  order  to  show  that  the 
Church  is  behind  the  raid.  The  militarist  papers 
propagate  the  story  that  the  Pope  sent  a  rose  to  the 
Italian  Admiral  before  he  sailed ;  and  they  are  always 
reproducing  the  remarks  of  some  "  alto  personaggio 
del  mondo  clericale  "  regarding  the  enthusiasm  which 


CONCLUSION  389 

is  displayed  for  the  expedition  at  the  Vatican.  The 
revolutionaries,  on  the  other  hand,  assert  that  the 
Banco  di  Roma  is  an  ecclesiastical  concern,  run  largely 
by  money  from  the  Vatican  itself ;  and  accordingly 
they  denounce  the  whole  war  as  a  clericalist,  money- 
making  adventure.  This  is  quite  untrue,  but,  at 
the  same  time,  it  may  injure  both  the  Church  and 
the  Throne  in  the  eyes  of  the  lower  classes.  A 
similar  statement  was  made  by  the  Spanish  revolu- 
tionists regarding  the  Melilla  expedition,  and,  whether 
it  was  true  or  false,  that  statement  led  indirectly  to 
the  Barcelona  riots  and  the  death  of  Ferrer. 

In  the  great  cathedral  of  Pisa  on  October  11th 
there  was  an  imposing  religious  service  for  the 
22nd  Infantry  Regiment  which  was  leaving  for  Tripoli. 
At  the  end  of  the  service  the  National  Anthem  was 
played  and  greeted  with  "  tm  applauso  irrejrenahile  " 
— exactly  as  if  the  sacred  building  were  a  music-hall. 
Cardinal  Maffi,  Archbishop  of  Pisa,  afterwards 
addressed  the  soldiers.  Pointing  to  the  flags  which 
had  been  captured  from  the  Saracens  by  the  mediaeval 
republicans  of  Pisa,  and  which  now  hang  on  the 
cathedral  walls,  the  Archbishop  hoped  that  the  22nd 
would  bring  back  other  flags  to  cover  with  new 
glory  "  V  Italia,  la  terra  nostra." 

There  was  a  similar  send-off  in  Viareggio,  a  similar 
jingo  sermon,  and  the  playing  of  the  royal  march 
on  the  organ,  "  tra  la  cntusiastica  commozione  dei 
presenti." 

It  was  noted  by  the  Press  that  this  is  the  first 
occasion  on  which  the  Italian  National  Anthem  has 
ever  been  played  in  an  Italian  church.  But  surely 
the  Italian  clergy  have  chosen  a  bad  time  for  bringing 
about  even  a  partial  rapprochement  with  the  State. 
The  hand  they  grasp  is  wet  with  innocent  blood. 


390        ITALY'S    WAR    FOR    A    DESERT 

In  one  of  his  pastoral  letters  Monsignor  Bonomelli 
declared  that  the  war  in  Tripoli  was  a  war  "  for  the 
triumph  of  justice  and  civilisation.  It  is  not  blind 
nor  arbitrary  action.  It  is  not  a  thirst  for  conquest 
which  has  induced  Italy,  already  too  patient  and  too 
often  deceived,  to  have  recourse  to  arms.  It  is  the 
necessity  of  self-defence,  the  necessity  of  protecting 
our  economic  interests  and  of  vindicating  our  national 
dignity." 

The  bishop  concluded  by  saying  that  he  approved 
of  and  encouraged  the  expedition  to  Tripoli,  because 
"  next  to  the  tricolour  rises  the  Cross  ;  next  to  the 
work  of  civilisation  stands  religion,  which  has  freed 
the  world  from  slavery." 

It  is  certainly  a  pity  that,  having  freed  the  world 
from  slavery,  religion  did  not  proceed  to  free  the 
world  from  war,  which  is  almost  as  great  a  scourge, 
Christianity  would  have  done  so,  I  think,  if  it  had  re- 
mained united.  But  in  every  war  that  is  now  waged 
by  a  Christian  country  a  section  of  the  clergy  is 
absolutely  jingo,  while  the  peace-makers  are  nearly 
all  of  them  members  of  non-Christian  and  even  anti- 
Christian  organisations.  During  the  South  African 
conflict  we  in  this  country  heard  war  described  to  us 
from  clerical  lips  as  an  "  oratorio,"  and  were  called 
upon  to  rejoice  in  "war's  red  rain."  In  a  recent 
book,  "  The  Passing  of  War,"  the  author.  Canon 
Grane,  an  Anglican  clergyman,  confesses  that,  where 
war  is  concerned,  "  the  breach  between  the  creed  and 
conduct  of  Christendom  is  peculiarly  flagrant  "  ;  and 
the  "  Athenaeum  "  agrees  with  him  that  the  attitude 
of  English  clergymen  in  time  of  war  is  very  bad. 
"  For  one  who  lifts  his  voice  against  violence  and 
against  the  wholesale  extermination  of  human  life, 
there   are   scores   who   openly   or   covertly   fan   the 


CONCLUSION  391 

flames  of  passion  and  hatred,  in  direct  violation  of 
the  very  essence  and  spirit  of  their  creed."  On  the 
Continent  anti-MiUtarist  is  a  synonym  for  anti- 
Christian. 

At  Santa  Maria  Capua  Vetere,  Professor  Eugenio 
Vallega,  a  celebrated  preacher,  discoursed  on  the 
war  in  a  theatre  which  was  ornamented  with  Italian 
flags. 

Monsignor  Carli,  Bishop  of  Sarzana,  hopes  in  a 
circular  letter  to  his  clergy  and  people  that  "  the 
blessed  flag  may  be  terrible  to  the  enemies  of  the 
Christian  name  and  a  certain  pledge  of  victory.  Then 
our  soldiers  and  the  Italian  people  will  chant  a  hymn 
of  exultation ;  and  our  ships,  guided  by  the  Divine 
assistance  and  freed  from  every  peril,  can  return 
tranquilly  to  their  posts,  happy  and  victorious." 

It  would  be  difficult,  of  course,  for  the  clergy  of  a 
country  to  stand  apart  from  their  fellows  during  the 
progress  of  a  war.  And  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  it 
pains  one  who  knows  what  a  mixture  of  finance, 
massacre,  and  muddle  this  Tripolitan  adventure 
really  is,  to  find  for  example  the  Vicar-General  of 
Naples  ordering  the  exposition  of  the  Blessed  Sacra- 
ment as  long  as  the  war  lasts,  and  the  Franciscan 
Fathers  in  Tripoli  singing  a  solemn  Te  Deum  in 
honour  of  General  Caneva's  "  victories  "  of  October 
23rd  and  October  26th. 

Are  the  Socialists  and  the  Syndicalists  alone  to 
struggle  against  war  ?  Why  do  not  the  Christian 
Churches  take  a  step  in  the  same  direction  by  at 
least  forbidding  religious  thanksgivings  in  churches 
for  the  slaughter  of  human  beings  ? 

In  some  rare  cases,  of  course,  such  rejoicings  are 
legitimate.  It  was  different  "  when  Hofer  roused 
Tyrol."      Friar    Haspinger   was   in    the    right    place 


392        ITALY'S    WAR    FOR    A    DESERT 

when  he  led  his  mountaineers  against  the  French. 
And  no  Christian  can  criticise  the  martial  chants  of 
the  heroic  Montenegrins  in  their  squat  little  Basilica 
of  stone,  hard  by  the  graves  of  their  old  Prince- 
Bishops. 

But  why  should  any  Christian  ecclesiastics  continue 
to  chant  like  blind  pipers  in  the  wake  of  specula- 
tive banks  or  millionaire  wire-pullers  or  Agnostic 
politicians  ?  They  might  as  well  sing  Te  Deums  to 
celebrate  successful  swindles  on  the  Stock  Exchange. 

It  would  be  only  a  waste  of  time  for  me  to  indulge 
in  prophecies  as  to  how  the  war  is  likely  to  terminate. 
For  there  never  was  a  war  quite  like  this  one.  The 
French  took  twenty  years  to  subdue  Algeria,  though 
Algeria  had  not  the  support  of  Constantinople  or  of 
the  surrounding  Mohammedan  populations. 

In  the  "  Neue  Freie  Presse  "  of  March  10th  Field- 
Marshal  von  der  Goltz  writes  an  extremely  interesting 
account  of  the  situation  at  that  time  in  Italy's  new 
"  possession."  It  is  a  candid  and  truthful  state- 
ment, but,  as  usual,  the  Italians  were  furious  about 
it,  so  furious  that  a  semi-official  paper  advised  the 
King  of  Italy  to  complain  on  this  subject  to  Kaiser 
Wilhelmwhen,  about  that  date,  the  two  monarchs  met. 
Von  der  Goltz  said  that  after  the  first  five  months 
the  great  Franco-Prussian  War  had  been  decided, 
whereas  the  first  five  months  of  the  Italo-Tripolitan 
War  had  left  things  practically  as  they  had  been  on 
the  first  day.  The  Italians  are  still,  to  all  intents  and 
purposes,  on  the  coast-line  cowering  under  the  guns 
of  their  fleet.  This  means  that  they  have  done 
nothing,  for  the  German  Field-Marshal  quotes  with 
approval  the  statement  of  the  traveller  Gerhard 
Rohlfs  that  "  the  stronghold  of  Tripoli  is  its  hinter- 
land."    Von   der   Goltz  points   out   that  there   are 


CONCLUSION  393 

chunks  of  Tripolitania  as  large  as  the  whole  German 
Empire  which  the  invaders  have  not  even  seen  yet, 

"  The  roads  from  Tripoli  to  the  Tchad  and  from 
Benghazi  to  Wadai  are  both  of  about  equal  length, 
namely,  2000  to  2200  kilometres,  that  is,  as  far 
as  from  Moscow  to  the  Swiss  frontier.  From  Tripoli 
to  the  generally  recognised  southern  border  of  the 
Turkish  vilayet  is  1400  kilometres  in  a  straight 
line,  that  is  to  say,  the  distance  between  Moscow 
and  Cracow.  Some  Turkish  posts  are  still  further 
south.  Caravans  need  months  to  go  thither, 
months  to  return.  Owing  to  the  long  halts  in  the 
oasis,  a  caravan  generally  takes  a  year  and  a  half 
or  two  years  for  the  whole  trip,  outwards  and  home 
again." 

The  Field-Marshal's  comparison  between  Russian 
and  Tripolitan  distances  is  ominous.  The  year  1812 
saw  a  great  army  lost  in  Muscovy's  deserts  of  snow. 
Shall  the  year  1912  see  another  great  army  lost  in 
Tripoli's  deserts  of  sand  ? 

Von  der  Goltz  seems  to  think  that  it  will,  if  the 
Italians  advance.  He  points  out  what  extraordinarily 
good  soldiers  the  Arabs  have  proved  themselves  to 
be.  They  have  not  only  picked  up  in  an  incredibly 
short  space  of  time  everything  that  can  be  learned 
about  modern  fire-arms,  but  they  have  become 
excellent  shots.  The  bravery  and  stubbornness  which 
they  have  displayed  in  their  contests  with  the  Italians 
are  "  geradezu  erstaunlich."  They  seem  to  regard  a 
rush  on  the  Italian  lines  much  in  the  same  light  as 
a  Londoner  would  regard  a  rush  to  Margate.  They 
feel  refreshed  and  invigorated  by  it — if  they  survive. 
There  are  nearly  a  million  and  a  half  of  these  Arabs, 
and  every  man  between  sixteen  and  sixty  is  capable 


394        ITALY'S    WAR    FOR    A    DESERT 

of  bearing  arms,  for  nature  and  the  hardships  of 
desert  life  have  mercifully  relieved  them  of  the 
cranks  and  the  valetudinarians.  If  the  Italians 
study  the  last  campaign  which  those  Tripolitans 
fought  they  may  get  some  idea  of  what  is  before  them. 
In  1835  the  Turks  seized  Tripoli  and  overturned 
the  dynasty  of  the  Karamanli  without  the  slightest 
difficulty.  But  the  resistance  in  the  interior,  and 
especially  in  Fezzan,  lasted  a  whole  year.  And  this 
though  there  was  no  question  of  religious  difference 
as  there  is  now,  though  there  were  no  such  charges 
of  massacre  made  against  the  Turks  as  are  now  made 
against  the  Italians. 

Those  massacres  in  the  oasis  constitute  a  most 
important  military  factor  in  the  present  campaign, 
and  any  writer  on  the  war  who  did  not  give  them 
great  prominence  would  make  a  serious  mistake. 
Writing  from  Senit  Beni-Adam  in  "  The  Times  " 
of  April  11th,  a  correspondent  of  that  paper  says 
that  "  from  Tunis  to  Aziziah  the  country  rings  with 
tales  of  wanton  destruction  committed  by  the  Italians, 
of  the  massacre  of  defenceless  men,  the  slaying  of 
women  and  small  children,  even  children  at  the 
breast.  ...  As  to  whether  the  tales  of  bloodshed 
.  .  .  are  true,  partly  true,  or  wholly  false,  is  a  matter 
of  no  importance  from  the  point  of  view  of  their 
effect  upon  the  war.  The  point  is  that  the  Arabs 
believe  them  implicitly,  that  these  tales  have  pene- 
trated into  the  ends  of  the  Desert  and  the  Sudan 
(where  reinforcements  are  consequently  beginning 
to  arrive  in  larger  and  larger  numbers),  and  that  they 
have  aroused  in  their  believers  an  undying  hatred  of 
the  Italians." 

From  the  purely  material  and  strategical  points 
of  view  the  oasis  massacres  were,  therefore,  a  tre- 


CONCLUSION  395 

mendous  mistake.  The  corpse  of  each  innocent  man, 
woman  and  child  murdered  by  the  Itahans  in  the 
oasis  will  cost  the  murderers  literally  ten  times  its 
weight  in  gold,  ten  times  its  weight  in  Italian  dead. 
It  is  a  heavy  price  to  pay  for  a  wilderness  of  sand, 
especially  when  the  purchasers  don't  get  the  wilder- 
ness after  all. 

To  return  to  von  der  Goltz,  the  old  German  Field- 
Marshal  sees  no  way  out  of  the  difficulty  except  for 
the  Italians  to  run  a  railway  right  down  to  the  south 
of  Fezzan  ;  but  he  admits  that  such  a  railway  will, 
owing  to  its  enormous  length,  be  liable  to  be  broken 
in  a  hundred  places. 

The  Italians  have  forgotten  the  Syrian  adage  of 
Napoleon, — an  adage  which,  by  the  way,  the  great 
Corsican  himself  forgot  when  he  attacked  the  Russian 
steppes, — "  Never  make  war  against  a  Desert." 


APPENDIX 

If  the  reader  wants  to  get  a  good  idea  of  the  monstrous 
length  to  which  the  cult  of  the  cannon  has  been  carried 
by  Italian  jingoes  I  would  advise  him  to  read  "  la  Bataille 
de  Tripoli,"  by  the  "  poet  "  Marinetti.  My  own  atten- 
tion was  drawn  to  it  by  a  cultured  Irish  lady  who  is  as 
disgusted  as  I  am  myself  at  the  present  domination  of 
Rome  by  Rome's  own  barbarians. 

Describing  the  fighting  on  October  26th,  Marinetti 
tells  how  he  went  to  the  house  of  Genial  Bey  in  order 
"  to  embrace  the  ensanguined  brow  of  this  soldier  who 
hugs  in  his  arms  his  hot  rifle,  as  a  mother  embraces  a 
feverish  child.  .  .  .  An  artilleryman  .  .  .  stammers 
painfully,  with  his  torn  jaws  :  '  Eight  !  I  have  killed 
eight  of  them  !  '  But  nothing  equals  the  epic  splendour 
of  this  sergeant  who,  his  mouth  closed  by  bloody  gashes, 
lifts  his  two  hands  towards  me  each  instant  to  indicate 
by  his  ten  outspread  digits  that  he  has  killed  ten." 

The  deaths  referred  to  were  probably  the  murders  of 
innocent,  unarmed  people,  though  the  jingo  poet  does 
not  seem  to  realise  that  such  was  the  case. 

To  my  mind  this  adoration  of  slaughter  is  almost  as 
great  a  sign  of  degeneracy  as  the  Futurist  movement 
itself.  Healthy  nations  take  it  for  granted  that  their 
soldiers  and  their  sailors  have  ordinary  male  courage  : 
it  is  only  morbid  and  cowardly  degenerates  who  go  into 
paroxysms  of  excitement  and  sing  wild  paeans  when 
they  see  an  artillerist  pointing  a  cannon  at  an  enemy 
three  miles  off  and  unable  to  reply.  In  his  "  Canzone 
dei  Trofei,"  d'  Annunzio  falls  into  raptures  about  the 
firing  of  a  gun,  though  there  was,  under  the  circumstances, 

397 


398        ITALY'S    WAR    FOR    A    DESERT 

no  more  danger  in  that  than  there  would  be  in  working 
the  handle  of  a  village  pump  in  Surrey.  Following 
d'  Annunzio  (at  a  very  great  distance),  Marinetti  cele- 
brates with  a  tremendous  eruption  of  very  bad  poetry 
the  bursting  of  Italian  shrapnel-shells  among  the  Turks, 
the  "  deluge  of  lead,  the  grand  deluge  of  Italian  force." 
("  Que  c'est  beau  !  Quelle  chance  !  Une  joie  delirante 
serre  ma  gorge.  .  .  .  Bravo  !  .  .  .  Bravo  !  .  .  .  Gloire  a 
vous,  beaux  fantassins  du  40e.  .  .  .  Salut  a  vous,  im- 
petueux  major  Bianculli,  capitaine  Vigevano,  capitaine 
Galliani  !  .  .  .  Salut  a  toi,  lieutenant  Vicinanza,  heros 
au  corps  de  caoutchouc") 

The  absurdity  of  all  this  wretched  bombast  will  be 
more  apparent  when  we  remember  that  the  "  beautiful 
foot-soldiers,"  the  "  impetuous  Major  BianculH,"  and 
*'  Lieutenant  Vicinanza,  thou  hero  of  the  india-rubber 
body  "  all  ran  like  deer  before  the  Arabs,  and  that  the 
result  of  the  whole  engagement  was  an  Italian  retreat. 

But  this  does  not  affect  Signor  Marinetti.  He  ad- 
dresses the  stars ;  he  wishes  that  he  could  turn  himself 
into  a  projectile  so  that  he  could  burst  among  the 
"  execrated  "  enemy  :  in  language  that  is  hardly  decent, 
he  makes  love  to  the  cannon.  The  machine-gun  is  "an 
elegant  and  fatal  woman  ..."  "  une  femme  char- 
mante,  et  sinistre,  et  divine." 

The  brothel  and  the  slaughter-house  seem  to  furnish 
this  Italian  gentleman  with  all  his  comparisons.  When 
the  shells  strike  the  Desert,  "  Le  sable  enormement 
creuse  rebondit,  se  redresse  en  gonflant  une  colossale 
nudite  de  femme  aux  crevantes  mamelles.  .  .  .  Cette 
fois  I'immense  corps  de  sable  improvise  dresse  en  plein 
ciel  un  profil  plus  humain.  Ses  gros  seins  noirs  coulent 
en  reglisse  de  fumee  et  son  ventre  roule  volumineuse- 
ment  une  danse  solennelle.  ..." 

When  we  realise  that  the  men  who  write  this  sort  of 
drivel  are  not  only  circulating  without  a  keeper,  but  are 
dictating  the  policy  of  Italy,  we  shall  understand  the 
danger  to  which  Europe  is  exposed. 


APPENDIX  399 

Speaking    of    the    anti-war    party,    Signer    Marinetti 
declares  that : 

"  We  have  recently  knocked  down  with  our  fists  in 
the  streets  and  at  public  meetings  our  bitterest  adver- 
saries, spitting  at  the  same  time  in  their  faces  these 
firm  principles  :  .  .  . 

"  (3)  The  tiresome  memory  of  Roman  glory  must 
at  length  be  wiped  out  by  an  Italian  grandeur  a  hun- 
dred times  greater.  .  .  . 

"...  We  invite  the  Italian  Government,  now  be- 
come Futurist,  to  increase  all  the  national  ambitions 
by  despising  the  stupid  accusations  of  piracy  and  pro- 
claiming the  birth  of  PanitaHanism." 


THE   END. 


INDEX 


Abruzzi,  Duke  of,  364,  365 

Aerenthal,  Baron  von,  32 

Aeroplanes,  Italian,  122-5,  203, 
225,  246 

Agadir,  24 

Agedzia,  124 

Agelat,  245 

"  Agenzia  Italiana,"  the,  viii 

Ain  Zara,  119 

"  Alam,"  the,  29 

Albatross,  the,  51 

Alexandria,  22 

Algeria,  42 

Ali  Frefer,  290 

Alliance  Franraise,  the,  23 

Altina,  Lieutenant,  149,  150 

Alvarez,  Mr.,  360,  371-3 

American     Consul,     the.       See 
Mr.  Wood 

American   correspondents,    368. 
See  also  Signor  TullioGiordana 

Amrus,  351-3 

Annexation  Bill,  the,  40 

Apulia,  40 

Aquilina,  Chevalier,  57-9 

Aquilina,  Julius  Caesar,  57 

Arab  boy,  sick,  262-6,  271-3 

Arab  girl,  sick,  267 

Arab    massacres,    134,    144-50, 
172,  177,  202,  232,  233,  243, 
244,  249-62,  268-70,  274-98,   j 
308,  338-340,  345-7, 360, 364-  I 
74,  384,  394,  395  ! 

2D  40 


Arab  prisoners  shot,  141-3,  148, 
163,  186,  187,  234,  235,  254, 
255,  258,  260,  276-81,  285-7, 
340,  341 

Arab  women  and  children,  228- 
30,  232,  252,  253,  255,  257, 
259,  262-7,  271-3,  275,  277, 
282-4,  291,  292,  295,  297,  298, 
340,  341,  380,  381 

Arabi  Pasha,  42 

Artbauer,  Herr  Otto,  xii,  291 

Ashmead-Bartlett,  Ellis,  xvi, 
112,  253-8,  266,  368,  372 

"  Athenaeum,"  the,  390 

Austrian  correspondents,  368, 
370 

"  Avanti,"  the,  xxi,  xxii,  xxiii, 
25,  40,  383-5 

"  Avanti  "  correspondent.  iSee 
Signor  Guarino 

Azilat,  107 

Aziziah,  329,  394 


B 

Bagot,  Richard,  9,  232,  363, 
364,  366,  369,  371,  373 

Baldari,  Signor,  18,  21 

Banco  di  Roma,  the,  14-21,  25, 
76,  133,  205,  261,  387-9 

Banco  di  Roma,  Director  of  the. 
See  Signor  Pacelli 

Banco  di  Roma,  Inspectors- 
General  of  the,  17 


402         ITALY'S    WAR    FOR   A   DESERT 


Banco  di  Roma,  Solicitor  of  the, 

17 
Banco  di  Roma,  Vice-President 

of  the,  16 
Barzini,    Luigi,    108,    110,    111, 

269,  318,  342,  347,  366,  367, 

371,  372 
Basilicata,  the,  40 
Bedi  Farug,  377,  378 
Bedouins,    40,     140,    148,    178, 

305,  332,  350 
Bedouin     village,     the     burnt, 

261-73 
Belli,  Signor,  21 
Bellini,  Lieutenant,  232 
Benadir,  41 
Ben-Garden,  225 
Benghazi,  xxi,   16,   18,  25,   165, 

239,  289,  296,  329,  334,  336, 

384,  393 
Bennett,  Ernest  N.,  30,  55,  217, 

223,  375 
Berbers,  the,  65,  79 
"  Berliner  Lokal-Anzeiger,"  the, 

XV,    55,    266,    271,    276,    292, 

370 
"  Berliner  Lokal-Anzeiger"  cor- 
respondent.     See    Otto    von 

Gottberg 
"  Berliner  Tageblatt,"  the,  358 
"  Berliner     Tageblatt "     corre- 
spondent.     See   Dr.    Gottlob 

Adolf  Krause 
Bersaglieri,  the,  69-72,  74,  76, 

78,    100,    108,    120-2,    131-3, 

135,     137,      139,     141,     148, 

157,   196,   197,  241,  250,  252, 

256,  281,  282,  291,  329,  341, 

352,  353,  362,  380 
Bersaglieri,    11th,    122,    131-3, 

135,     137,     139,     141,      148, 

157,  227,  347 


Bevilacqua,  the  Very  Rev. 
Father  Giuseppe,  263,  264, 
266,  271 

Bevione,  Signor  Giuseppe,  53-5, 
99,  144,  229,  268-70,  314, 
346,  353 

Bianculli,  Major,  398 

Bir  Tobras,  30 

Bizerta,  22 

"  Blackwood's  Magazine,"  138, 
251,  354,  376,  377 

Boccioni,  Signor,  xii 

Bomba,  Gulf  of,  22,  23 

Bonelli,  Captain,  108 

Bonomelli,  Mgr.,  390 

Borea-Ricci,  Admiral,  95,  303 

Boridga,  Signor,  x 

Borsa,  Signor  Mario,  xix 

Bosphorus,  the,  33 

Bou-Kamesch,   55 

Bresciani,  Signor,  15,  16,  18-21 

Briccola,  General,  334,  336, 
384 

Brin,  the,  47,  48,  108 

British  Ambassador  in  Rome, 
29 

British  Consul,  78,  165,  371 

British  Consul-General.  See 
Mr.  Alvarez 

British  correspondents.  See 
Ellis  Ashmead  -  Bartlett, 
Bennet  Burleigh,  "  Daily 
Mail  "  correspondent,  Mr. 
Davis,  Martin  Donohoe, 
Thomas  E,  Grant,  Mr.  Garvin, 
Mr.  Magee,  Percival  Phillips, 
"The  Times"  correspondent, 
"Westminster  Gazette"  cor- 
respondent 

Brucchi,  Captain,  132 

Bumeliana,  85,  97,  100-2,  104, 
105,    107-9,     111,     191,    121, 


INDEX 


403 


122,  124,  260,  274,  282,  291, 
311,  312 
Burleigh,  Bennet,  xv,  162,  259, 
260,  369 


Cacace,  the  corvette,  107 

Caetani,  Signer,  19 

Cagni,  Captain,  95,  99,  102, 
103,  105,  107,  111,  316,  332, 
333,  343 

Cairo,  xxvi,  28 

Caneva,  Lieut. -General  Carlo, 
ix,  X,  xviii,  8,  10,  18,  20,  29, 
30,  83,  96,  99, 107,  112-14,  119, 
124,  127,  134-40,  144,  145, 
150,  158,  160-3,  168,  170, 
172,  173,  199,  201-4,  211-13, 
215,  219,  222,  226,  240,  251, 
254,  265,  266,  267,  270,  287, 
289,  292,  300,  308,  309-13, 
316,  324-9,  331,  334-8,  341, 
342,  345-9,  351,  354,  355, 
360,  361,  364,  365,  369,  371, 
373,  382,  384,  391 

"  Canzone  dei  Trofei,"  397 

Carabinieri,  the,  209,  236 

Caracciolo,  Captain,  236 

Carafa    d'     Andria,     Captain 
Senator,  179 

Carli,  Mgr.,  Bishop  of  Sarzana, 
391 

Carlo  Alberto,  the,  47,  49,  107, 
122,  130,  204 

Carrere,  M.  Jean,  346,  365,  366 

Cars-el-Azizie,  xvii 

Castellini,  Signor,  371 

Cattaro,  9 

Cervera,  Admiral,  50 

Chauvinists,  the,  x,  xi,  xx,  4, 
169,  170,  319,  320 

Chiappiroli,  Captain,  179 


Chiasso,  xx,  328 

Cipriani,  Hamilcar,  7,  11,  356 

"  Come  Siamo  Andati  a  Tripoh," 
268 

Constantinople,  31-4,  64,  74, 
104,  106,  176,  188,  328,  372 

Corradini,  Signor  Enrico,  214, 
223,  313,  314 

"  Corriere  della  Sera,"  the, 
vii,  xviii.  111,  323,  342,  347, 
363,  366,  367,  372,  384 

"  Corriere  della  Sera "  corre- 
spondent.   See  Luigi  Barzini 

"  Corriere  d'  Italia,"  the,  358 

Cossira,  M.,  253,  371 

Crispi,  9,  299,  317 

Cyrenaica,  20,  28,  39,  68,  165, 
334 

D 

Dab-il-si-Did,  Burial-ground  of, 
378 

"  Daily  Chronicle,"  the,  367 

"  Daily  Chronicle  "  correspon- 
dent.   See  Martin  Donohoe 

"  Daily  Graphic,"  the,  xiv,  xv 

"  Daily  Mail,"  correspondent, 
376 

"  Daily  Mirror,"  the,  xxvi 

"  Daily  Mirror  "  correspondents. 
See  Thomas  E.  Grant,  Mr. 
Magee,  and  Percival  PhiUips 

"  Daily  News,"  the,  xxvi,  270-2, 
371 

"  Daily  Telegraph,"  the,  162, 
259,  260,  366,  369 

"  Daily  Telegraph "  corre- 
spondent. See  Bennet  Bur- 
leigh 

Dani  Saada,  288 

D'  Annunzio,  Gabriele,  xxiv,  7, 
8,  193,  230,  302,  397,  398 


404 


ITALY'S   WAR  FOR   A  DESERT 


Dardanelles,  the,  33 

Dardo,  the,  107 

Dario,  Sardi,  xxi 

Davis,  Mr.,  254,  372 

De  Felice  Giuffrida,  Signer,  xvi, 

xvii,  113,  149,  159,  190,  304, 

305 
De  Frenzi,  371 
Defterdar,  the,  62,  93 
De  Luca  Aprile,  Signor,  x,  136, 

377,  378 
Derin,  Basilio,  135 
Derna,  the,  48,  51,  70,  99,  167, 

350 
Dema,  166,  239,  289,  296,  318, 

329,  336 
Dervishes,  107 
"  Deutsche  Tages  Zeitung,"  the, 

363 
"  Deutsche      Tages      Zeitung " 

correspondent.   See  Dr.  Chris- 
topher Pflaum 
di  Palma,  Lieutenant,  236 
Donohoe,  Martin,  252,  328,  367 
Duff,  M.  B.,  38 


E 

"  Eco  di  TripoH,"  the,  xxiv 

Eighth  Turkish  Infantry  Regi- 
ment, 132 

Eighty-fourth  Italian  Infantry 
Regiment,  128,  130,  212,  217, 
219,  227,  230,  231,  354 

Eighty-second  Italian  Infantry 
Regiment,  138,  139 

Einaudi,  Luigi,  323,  324 

El  Henni,  375,  379 

Emanuele  Filiberto,  the,  47,  49 

Emilio  Matteo  Sibille,  377,  378 

Encke,  Herr,  19,  25 

English  Sponge  Trust,  the,  18 


Entente  Cordiale,  the,  23 
Enver  Bey,  55,  56,  140,  327 
Eritrea,  41 

Eugene  of  Savoy,  Prince,  387 
"  Excelsior,"  the  253 
"  Excelsior  "     correspondent. 
See  M.  Cossira 


Faitini,  Captain,  232 
Falcon,  Loren90,  265 
Fara,  Colonel,  30,  112,  133,  136, 

138.  139,  240,  241 
Faravelli,   Admiral,   47,   53,   60, 

61,  103,  315,  388 
Ferruccio,  the,  48,  50 
Feshlum,  354 

Feshlum  mosque,  the,  139 
Fethi  Bey,  77,  170,  205 
Fezzan,  xvii,  114,  394,  395 
Fezzanis,  the,  80,  179,  182,  183, 

274,  277,  279,  280 
Fifth  Italian  Artillery,  176 
Filiberto,  the,  109 
Financial    Agent,    the   Turkish, 

62,  93 

First  Regiment  of  Italian  En- 
gineers, 179 

Foreign  Office,  the,  29,  30,  265, 
371 

Fortieth  Italian  Regiment,  127, 
130,  235 

"  Fortnightly  Review,"  the,  26 

"  Frankfurter  Zeitung,"  the, 
260,  272 

"  Frankfurter  Zeitung  "  corre- 
spondent. See  Dr.  Walter 
Weibel 

French  Cavass,  the,  156 

French  Consul,  the.  See  M. 
Seon 


INDEX 


405 


French  correspondents,  156,  368. 
^    See  also  M.  Cossira,  M.  Jean 

Carrere,  Reginald  Khan 
French   Vice-Consul,    the.      See 

M.  Theuillet 
Frugoni,  General,  138 
Futurists,    the,    xii,    171,    244, 

397,  399 

G 

GaUi,  Signor,  34,  126,  176,  177, 
196,  239,  301,  314-8,  321, 
325,  337 

Galliana,  Captain,  398 

Gandolfi,  Captain,  220 

Gargaresh,  119,  121,  122,  129, 
131,  133,  137,  169,  195,  205, 
291,  308 

Garibaldi,  the,  48,  50,  51 

Garvin,  Mr.,  364 

Gazr-Gefari,  xvii 

Gemal  Bey,  211,  212,  214, 
216,  217,  220,  229,  231,  245, 
270,  397 

German  Cavass  Hussein,  the, 
176-87,  280 

German  correspondents,  177.  See 
also  "  Frankfurter  Zeitung  " 
correspondent.  Otto  von  Gott- 
berg.  Dr.  Gottlob  Adolf 
Krause,  Herr  Mygind,  Dr. 
Christopher  Pflaum,  "  Vos- 
sische  Zeitung  "  correspond- 
ent. Dr.  Walter  Weibel. 

German  Consul,  the.  See  Dr. 
Alfred  von  Tilger 

Gharian,  xvii,  100,  113,  133, 
245,  329,  350 

Gharian  Mountains,  350 

Ghea,  xvii 

Ghirza,  39 

Giolitti,  Signor  Giovanni,  11,  12, 


19,  42,  136,  268,  273,  301,  314, 

340,  341,  346,  363 
Giordana,    Signor    Tullio,     136, 

362-4,  366,  367 
"  Giomale   d'  Italia,"    the,  vii, 

xiii,  XXV,  15,  129,  237,  388 
"  Giomale  di  Siciha,"  the,  377, 

378 
"  Giornale    di     SiciHa "     corre- 
spondent.      See     Signor     De 

Luca  Aprile 
Giovanni,  Manillo,  131 
Goebel,  Dr.,  358 
Golzio  battery,  the,  221 
Granatei,  Lieutenant,  232 
Grande,  Consul,  300 
Grandolfi,  Captain,  232 
Grane,  Canon,  390 
Grant,  Thomas  E.,  xiii,  100,  254, 

257,  272,  368,  372 
Great  Desert   Expedition,    the, 

329 
Gregory,  Dr.,  38 
Grey,  Sir  Edward,  25-7,  29,  32, 

42,  372 
Grossi,  M.,  38,  39 
Guarino,  Signor,  169 
Gurgi,  oasis  of,  125 

H 
Hakki  Bey,  33 
Hamidie,  Fort,  47,  48,  50,  107, 

239,  242,  239 
Hassuna  Pasha,  195 
Henni,  102-22,  133,  135-9,  205, 

222,    228,    240-2,    281,     351, 

357,  378 
Hombert,  Captam,  212 
Horns,  23,  329,  336 
Hunter  of  the  Sea,  the,  49,  70 
Hussein,    the    German    Cavass, 

176-86,  280 


406 


ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 


Ibrahim  Pasha,  Marshal,  15, 
34,  102 

"  II  Nazionahsmo,"  9,  10 

Ir'reh,  the,  78 

Itahan  Consul.  See  Consul 
Grande  and  Consul  Pestalozza 

Italian  Consul,  the  (at  Dema), 
166 

Italian  ^correspondents,  xviii, 
166,  167,  169,  182,  218,  270, 
342,376.  >S'eealsoLuigiBarzini, 
Signor  Boridga,  Signor  Castel- 
lini,  Zoli  Corrado,  De  Felice 
Giuffrida,  De  Frenzi,  De  Luca 
Aprile,Tullio  Giordana,  Signor 
Guarino,  Signor  Piazza, 
"  Stampa  "  correspondent 

Italian  Minister  for  Foreign 
Affairs,  313 

Italian  Ministry  of  War,  the, 
207 

Italian  Vice-Consul,  the.  See 
Signor  Galli 

Italian  War  Office,  71,  138,  329 


Jewish  Territorial  Organisation, 

38 
Jews  murdered,  288 
Jews,  the,  77,  79,  80,  88,  127, 

148,  155,  157,  158,  182,  199, 

288,  318,  342 

K 

Kahn,  Mr.  Reginald,  110 
Kajimaken,  222 
Kaimaken,  Castle  of,  133 
Kaiser,  the,  26,  392 
Karamanh,  the,  51,  75,  80,  195, 
242,  394 


Karamanli,      Prince      Hassuna 

Pasha,  18,  299-307,  316,  317, 

332,  349 
Karamanli,  Jussef,  299 
"  Kepi  "    of    "  Blackwood's 

Magazine,"  354 
Khalifa,  the.    See  the  Sultan 
Kipling,  Rudyard,  8,  261 
Kitchener,  Lord,  26,  28-30 
Krause,   Dr.   Gottlob  Adolf,  xi, 

272,  370 


"  La  Bataille  de  TripoH,"  397 
Landolina,  Captain,  220 
Lankester,  Sir  E.  Ray,  173 
"  Lavaro,"  the,  x 
"  Lavaro  "  correspondent.     See 

Signor  Boridga 
Lebda,  67 
Leghorn,  xxi 
Leptis,  66,  67 
"  Le  Temps,"  365,  366 
"  Le     Temps "     correspondent. 

See  M.  Jean  Carrere 
Liaozang,  battle  of,  237 
Libyan  desert,  the,  384 
Lodi  Cavalry,  the,  128,  220,  230, 

232 
Luzzatti,  Luigi,  41 

M 
Maffi,  Cardinal,  389 
Magee,  Mr.,  145,  162,  163 
Mahdi,  the,  42 
Mahmud  Shefket  Pasha,  32,  33, 

324 
Mahomed  Moussa  Bey,   Major, 

168 
Malta,  22 
Maltese,  the,  153,  154,  155,  165, 

207. 


INDEX 


407 


Maltese  Inn,  the,  135 
Manera,  Lieutenant,  236 
Marconi,  Signer,  364 
Marinetti,  Signor  F.  T.,  xii,  4, 

171,  397-9 
Marsa-Tobruck,  25,  26 
Massaua,  15 
"  Mattino,"  the,  24 
Mathuisieulx,  M,  de,  38,  40,  54 
Meshia,  the,  39,  87 
"  Messaggero,"  the,  xvi,  159,  229 
"  Messaggero  "      correspondent. 

See  Signor  de  Felice 
Messri,Fort,  120,  121,  122,  236, 

242,  250 
Merdoum,  39 
Milan,  388 
Misurata,  245 
Mohammed  Mosuri,  291 
Moizo,  Captain,  122 
MoUah,  Mohammedan,  378 
Monteil,  Captam,  38 
"  Morgenpost,"  the,  272 
"  Morgenpost  "     correspondent. 

See  Herr  Mygind 
"  Morning  Post  "  correspondent. 

See  Mr.  Davis 
Morocco,  79,  130,  375 
Munir  Pasha,   General,   34,   62, 

93,  97,  102,  164,  167 
Mygind,  Herr,  272 

N 
Naples,  103 

Naples,  Vicar-General  of,  391 
"Nation,"  the,  232,  366 
Nationalists,   the  Italian,   xxiii, 

4-12,   29,   31,    144,    169,   293, 

313,  314,  356 
Nefed,  39 
Nosciat  Bey,  Colonel,  xxiii,  61, 

61-3,  93,  97,  105-7,  129,  164, 


182,  220,  221,  227,  250,  306, 
328 

"  Neue  Freie  Presse,"  the,  xii, 
43,  169,  392 

"  New  York  American,"  the, 
177,  178,  302,  364 

"  New  York  Herald,"  the,  237, 
364,  366 

"  New  York  Herald "  corre- 
spondent. See  Signor  Tullio 
Giordana 

"  New  York  World,"  the,  xxvi 

Ninety-third  Italian  Regiment, 
113 

Norton,  Richard,  xiv 

"  Novoe  Vremya  "  correspon- 
dent.   See  Colonel  Pavloff 

"  Nuovo  Giomale,"  the,  xiii 

O 

Oasis  of  Death,  the,  195,  201-26, 

228-36,   242-5,   249-73,   274- 

87,  290-5 
Oasis,  the,  100,  101,  104,  120 
Oasis,  the  Tripoh,  132,  134-52, 

333,  338,  340,  342,  351-3,  355, 

358,  359,  377 
Odescalchi,  Princess,  387 
"  Ora,"  the,  xix 
Orsi,  Lieutenant,  217-9 
Osmanii,  the,   65,   68,   97,    154, 

301 
"  Osservatore     Romano,"     the, 

387 


Pacelh,  Signor,  15,  197,  387,  388 

"  Pall  Mall  Gazette  "  correspon- 
dent.   See  Mr.  Garvin 

Panther,  the,  24 

Papal  Nuncio  in  Constantinople, 
the,  64 


408 


ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A  DESERT 


Partenope,  the,   107 
Pavloff,  Colonel,  158 
Pertusio,  First-Lieutenant,  108 
Pervinquiere,  M.,  39 
Pestalozza,  Consul,  337 
Pflaum,  Dr.  Christopher,  363 
Phillips,  Percival,  xix,  100,  101 
Piazza,  Captain,  122 
Piazza,  Signor,  371 
Pietro  Verri,  Captain,  238,  239, 

240,  241 
Pisa  Cathedral,  389 
Pope,  the,  23,  62,  63,  133,  383, 

387-9 
Preveza,  35 
Punzio,  Captam,  131,  132 

R 

Reschid  Effendi,  97 

"Return  of  the  Romans,"  the, 

65 
Reuter's     correspondent.       See 

Ellis  Ashmead-Bartlett 
Re    Umberto,    the,    47-53,    71, 

224 
Rieci,  Admiral  Borea-,  95,  303 
Roberts,  Lord,  xxvi,  364 
Robiony,  Captain,  228,  232 
Rohlfs,  Gerhard,  392 
"  Roma,"  the,  162 
Rome,  viii,  34,   103,   104,   137, 

138,  387 
Russian     correspondent.        See 

Colonel  Pavloff 

S 
Sabratha,  67 

Salvatore,  Evangelista,  131,  132 
Sania,  290,  291 

Santa  Maria  Capua  Vetera,  391^ 
Saraceni,  the,  132 
Sardegna,  the,  47,  49,  108,  109 


Sardinia,  40 

Sarzana,   Bishop  of.     See  Mgr. 

Carli 
Savino,  Captain,  130,  221 
"Secolo,"    the,    xix,    113,    149, 

346,  349-51,  377 
"  Secolo  "    correspondent.      See 

Zoli,  Corrado 
Senit  Beni-Adam,  85,  394 
Senussi,  the,  194,  249,  320,  327 
Seon,  M.,  155,  156 
Sfax,  225 

Sharashett,  105-7,  119,  120,  122, 
125,  129,  131,  133,  136,  137, 
152,  184,  186,  190,  205,  227, 
228,  241,  308,  317,  345,  346, 
351-4,  357 
Sharashett,    battle    of,  viii,  ix, 

xxi,  201,  203,  211,  327 
Sicilia,   the,   47,   49,    105,    122, 

127,  186,  204 
Sicily,  40,  114 
Sidi  Ben  Nur,  xvii 
Sidi  el  Masri,  291 
Sidi  Messri,  xvii,  119-201,  203, 

241-3 
Sidi  Messri,  battle  of,  211,  212- 

27,  327 
Sidi  Said,  223 
Sighele,  Scipio,  9,  10 
Sixth  Italian  Infantry  Regiment, 

202 
Socialists,  the  Italian,  xvi,  xvii, 

289,  382,  384,  385,  391 
Soffedjia,  the,  39 
Sokra,  290,  291 
Solaroli,  Lieutenant,  232 
Sonnino,  Baron,  15,  388 
Spanish  Vice-Consul,  59 
"  Spectator,"  the,  363 
Spinelli,  Colonel,  219,  227,  230, 
343 


INDEX 


409 


"Stamps,"  the,  144,  340,  341, 

367 
"  Stampa  "  correspondent,  the, 

340 
Stead,  W.  T.,  xii,  266 
Sudan,  the,  394 
Suez  Canal,  28 
Sultan  of  Turkey,   the,   31,  33, 

43,  56,  75,  99,  317,  355 
Sultanie,  Fort,  47-9,  51,  52,  91, 

125,  127 
Suni-ben-Adin,  126,  129 
Syndicalists,  the,  391 
Syracuse,  112,  114 


Tadjura,  238 

Tagiura,    xvii,     131,    245,    291, 

353 
Tamaio,  Captain,  214 
Tanjura,  250 
Taranto,  365 
Tarhuna,  245 
Tchad,  the,  393 
Terrorists,  the,  382 
"  The  Passing  of  War,"  390 
"  The  Ship,"  7 
Theuillet,  M.,  92-4,  96,  97 
"  Times,"    the,    30,    202,    252, 

295,  321,  322,  355,  357,  394 
"  Times  "   correspondent,  xviii, 

xix,     202,      203,      252,     348, 

368,  369,  376,  377 
"  Times,"    a    correspondent    of 

the,  295,  321,  322,  394 
Tittoni,  Signer,  16,  33 
Tobruk,  296,  329,  336 
Tonnino,  Baron,  15 
Touaregs,  the,  77,  78,  182 
"  Tribuna,"  the,  xvi 
"  Tribunali,"  the,  xix,  xx 


Triple  Alliance,  the,  xxv 

Tripoli,  City  of,  xvii,  xxiii,   15, 

16,    20-2,    25,    47,    48,    51-4, 

57-63,     65-7,     69-83,     90-9, 

104,  106,  108,  113,   114,   119, 

120,  122-5,  137,  145,  152-72, 
176-93,  195-9,  204-40,  242, 
270,  288-90,  293,  296,  305, 
308-12,  318,  329,  331,  336, 
343,  348,  361,  371,  373,  384, 
393 

Tripoli-Misura,  xvi 

Tripoli  oasis,  84,  85,  92,  101,  120, 

121,  134,  135,  139,  144-50, 
190,  206,  213-5,  220,  228,  229, 
232-4,  245,  249,  250,  258-72, 
274-98,  333,  338,  340,  341, 
346,  353 

"  Tripolitania  and  Italy,"  38 
Trotter,  Dr.,  38 
Tunis,  23,  25,  157,  225,  394 
Tunisia,  41,  42,  55,  78,  328 
Turkish  doctor,  a,  111,  112 
Turkish  Minister  for  War,  34 
Turkish  Political  Agent,  62 
Twenty-second  Italian  Infantry 

Regiment,  227,  228,  229,  230, 

389 


Vali,  the,  15,  102,  165 
Vali,  castle  of  the,  52 
Vallogii,  Professor  Eugenio,  391 
Vannutelli,  Cardinal,  387 
Vareae,  the,  60,  51 
Venice,  41 

Vercelli,  Lieutenant,  181 
Verri,    Captain   Pietro,   50,    51, 

238,  239.  314,  318 
Viaroggio,  389 
Vicinanza,  Lieutenant,  195,  398 


410 


ITALY'S   WAR  FOR  A   DESERT 


Victor  Emmanuel,  King,  4,  8, 
133,  134,  170,  187,  261,  301, 
326,  382,  392 

Vigevano,  Captain,  398 

"  Vincenzo  Perisio."  jSee  Captain 
Pietro  Verri 

Vischer,  Dr.  Adolph,  39 

Von  dem  Borne,  Lieut.-General, 
54 

Von  der  Goltz  Pasha,  Field- 
Marshal,  43,  392,  393,  395 

Von  Gottberg,  Otto,  xv,  25,  91, 
153,  199,  229,  265-8,  271, 
272,  274-6,  287,  292,  351-3, 
362,  370 

Von  Loehow,  Herr,  19,  25,  125, 
126,    128 

Von  Tilger,  Dr.  Alfred,  55,  92-4, 
96,  97,  176,  185,  267,  362,  370, 
371 

"  Vossische  Zeitung,"  the,  149, 
293,  329 

"  Vossische  Zeitung"  correspon- 
dent, 170,  293,  329 


W 

Wadai,  393 

Weibel,  Dr.  Walter,  xi,  199, 
260,  268,  272 

Weickert,  Herr,  19,  25 

"  Westminster  Gazette,"  the, 
xxvi,  65,  270,  366,  370, 
371 

"  Westminster  Gazette  "  corre- 
spondent, 369 

Wood,  Mr.,  61-3,  172,  348 

Wright,  Mr.,  344,  345 


Yovmg  Turks,  the,  4,  31,  219, 
372 


Zanzur,  127,  238 

Zoli,    Corrado,    230,    337,    338, 

349-51 
Zouara,  168 


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